Starstruck

by Rachel Shukert

  An image of Dane swam into Margo’s head. She remembered the soaring feeling of being in his arms, the unspoken promises in his warm green eyes. “What will he say?”

  “Dane’s already agreed,” Mr. Karp said flatly. “He’s in enough hot water as it is with this Diana business. Dane was in Hollywood a long time before he made it, and now that he has, you better believe he’s enjoying the perks. Trust me, darling, he’s not going to give it all up for one little teenage virgin, sweet as she might be.”

  His words hit Margo like a sledgehammer. A teenage virgin. She winced in shame. Was that what they thought of her? No wonder Dane had given her up so easily. What use was a girl like that to a man of the world like Dane Forrest? What a fool she’d been, what a stupid, naïve, arrogant little fool, to think he could ever have cared for her at all.

  “But there’s exciting news too,” Mr. Karp was saying. “You see, just to be certain that you won’t be tempted, that there can’t possibly be any hint of anything between the two of you, you are going to begin a very conspicuous, very well-publicized romance with someone else.” He grinned. “Jimmy Molloy.”

  “Jimmy?” Margo gasped. “But what about Gabby?”

  “Gabby?” Mr. Karp looked confused.

  “Gabby Preston. She’s crazy about Jimmy,” Margo protested. “They’re starring together in the new Tully Toynbee movie, and especially after last night, when he escorted her home after …” She stopped herself before she gave away any more details of Gabby’s precipitous departure. No point getting Gabby in trouble too.

  “Gabby Preston is a little girl,” Mr. Karp said. “Don’t worry about her. We’ll find someone nice for her when the time comes. In the meantime, Jimmy Molloy is the boy for you.”

  “But it’s absurd,” Margo pleaded. “I hardly know Jimmy.”

  “You hardly know Dane Forrest.”

  Margo shook her head. “That’s different.”

  “Darling, listen to me.” Mr. Karp came around from behind the desk. “When I was a small boy, long before I came to this wonderful country, I lived in a small village in Russia called Plodov. And in Plodov, as in every village of its kind, there lived a matchmaker, and when it came time for the sons or the daughters of each family to marry, the matchmaker would make for each of them a proper match. My own beloved mother, may her soul rest in peace”—he paused to roll his eyes heavenward—“never even met my dear departed father before their wedding day. Fifteen years old she was, and the night before she was to be married she cried her eyes out. ‘Papa,’ she begged of my grandfather, ‘how can I marry a perfect stranger?’ But she married him, and they had six children and were happy all their days, and all her life she was glad she listened to her papa. Because to do otherwise would have been unthinkable.” Kneeling beside her chair, he took her hands in his. The metal of his thick wedding band felt cold against her skin. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Margo?”

  Yes, Margo thought. You’re telling me I don’t have a choice. She closed her eyes, struggling to compose herself. In her mind’s eyes, all she could see was Dane. Dane has already agreed. “And if I refuse?” she whispered.

  Mr. Karp got up off his knees. “Then we’ll have no choice but to terminate your contract with us. I suppose you could try to go to another studio, but I doubt anyone would be interested in an actress who was willing to throw away an opportunity a million actresses would cut off their right arms for. And please, darling,” he cautioned, “I know how romantic young girls can be, but don’t get any ideas about giving it all up for the love of Dane Forrest. He’ll have forgotten all about you before your car even pulls off the studio lot.”

  Margo pressed her lips together, willing herself not to cry again. “And The Nine Days’ Queen?”

  Mr. Karp smiled. “Then the part of Lady Jane Grey will go to the other girl. Gene Tierney is her name. She’s just your age. From a good family in the East. A debutante, just like you. And I understand her parents are very supportive of her career.”

  Her parents. It was the trump card. The final reminder of what Margo had signed away. Olympus Studios was mother and father to her now. If she defied this new set of parents, she would have nowhere to go. Leo Karp had given her a choice that was no choice at all.

  Slowly, very slowly, she reached for the script.

  “Good.” Mr. Karp expelled a little gasp of air as he bowed his head. She wondered if, even for a moment, he had doubted she’d say yes. “Very good. I knew you’d make the right decision. Now go back to your bungalow and start studying your lines like a good little schoolgirl. But first, come here and let me kiss you, like a proud papa.”

  Mechanically, she rose from the chair. Clutching the thick bundle of the script against her chest, as though it were a plate of armor, she allowed him to briefly press his lips, damp and tobacco-dusted from the cigar, against her forehead. “Mr. Karp,” she said, “may I ask you something?”

  His eyes glinted as he nodded his assent. Margo took a deep breath. It’s now or never, she thought. She might never get another chance. “Where is Diana Chesterfield?”

  “Diana Chesterfield,” Mr. Karp repeated. Margo had expected him to look angry, or shocked that she’d been so bold to ask the question directly, or incredulous that she’d assume he would know. Instead, he just smiled. A calm, thin smile that somehow chilled her to the bone. “Margo dear, if I were you, I wouldn’t be quite so eager for Diana Chesterfield to be found.”

  “But why?”

  “Because, darling.” He spoke in the same calm voice one might use to placate a child who kept asking why the sky was blue. “If Diana Chesterfield was here, why on earth would we need you?”

  Never let your guard down.

  Some people embroidered their favorite adages on cushions; for years, Amanda Farraday had imagined her own practically pulsating through her body. As though she’d swallowed the letters, one by one, until they were visible, raised and blue as veins, beneath her pale skin. But lately, something had changed. The icy motto was fading. A trumpet had been sounded, and that old wall of Jericho was slowly crumbling, if not quite tumbling, down. For why else would she be here, waiting patiently outside the cloakroom of the Trocadero supper club, listening to Harry argue good-naturedly with the maître d’, who had had the misguided temerity to suggest that “Monsieur might be more comfortable” if he borrowed a jacket and tie from the restaurant to wear.

  “If Monsieur thought he would be more comfortable in a jacket and tie,” Harry replied, “Monsieur would have arrived in a jacket and tie. If it’s a question of your comfort, then have the decency to say so directly.”

  “Monsieur, it seems it is simply a question of semantics.”

  “But semantics are everything!” Harry cried. “Semantics are the difference between transparency and exploitative obfuscation. Semantics are how dictatorial governments turn workers and other benighted classes against their own best interests. Semantics are the scaffolding upon which fascism is built!”

  Amanda sighed fondly. Harry couldn’t have been more unintelligible to her if he were speaking French. Normally, she found some excuse to decline Harry’s suggestions for a night out on the town. Not because of outbursts like these—on the contrary, there was something perversely appealing about Harry’s almost missionary zeal for discussing the tenets of radical politics with every waitress, janitor, or gas station attendant who wandered across his path. Amanda was simply afraid of being recognized by the wrong sort. Harry was so astute, so quick to pick up on the smallest things, that it wouldn’t take much: the wrong kind of look, a misplaced word or two, and she’d have an awful lot of quick explaining—not to mention lying—to do to recover lost ground. Lucky for her, Harry’s invitations were few and far between; the naturally hermetic life of a writer more easily lent itself to long private drives through the mountains in her pearl-gray Packard convertible, or sandwiches hastily munched between kisses on the couch in his office. But when Harry had called that day, insisting
that they go out to dinner at the Trocadero, she’d surprised herself by saying yes. Maybe she was feeling more confident; surely the more time that passed, the less likely she was to be found out.

  Or maybe it had to do with Olive Moore.

  Amanda had been apprehensive when Olive Moore had summoned her, anxious to hear what her protégée had dug up on Margo Sterling. Try as she might, Amanda had been unable to find out Margo’s real name. The girl had rebuffed all overtures of friendship. The only information Amanda had to offer Olive was that she thought Margo had been raised in Pasadena, and that she seemed fond of a little gold-and-pearl pin that looked a lot like the one Olive wore.

  “Are you sure?” Olive had asked. “The same pin?” Amanda said that she wasn’t, she’d only seen it for an instant, but it looked awfully similar.

  “Thank you, dear,” Olive had said, her blue eyes imbued with a faraway glow. It was only then that Amanda noticed the assortment of movie magazines spread across Olive’s desk, each open to a story about the dashing Miss Sterling’s new romance with teenage sensation Jimmy Molloy. America’s Sweethearts, blared one. Girls Across America Lament: Has Love Finally Found Jimmy Molloy? As usual, Picture Palace carried the biggest scandal: Jimmy and Margo … and Baby Makes Three? Amanda shook her head. She couldn’t begin to imagine the source of Olive’s fixation on the pretty blonde. If Margo were a former employee, Amanda would surely know, and as for one of Olive’s … extracurricular interests, well, Margo Sterling didn’t seem the type. Perhaps it was the resemblance to Diana. The only thing Amanda cared about was that her part in it seemed to have ended, at least for now.

  It was terrible, living under this constant threat of blackmail. If she could only break through, get a good enough part, become a big enough star that the studio would have to protect her. Sometimes she almost felt like throwing in the towel, taking the big mason jar full of cash she’d managed to squirrel away from her salary and the sale of some jewelry and the money her dinner dates gave her and go north. San Francisco, maybe, or Seattle, or even New York; somewhere no one would recognize her, where she could start over with nothing to fear. But then she’d think of Harry, with his loud voice and soft lips. Harry, who even now, as the maître d’ at last settled them into their banquette and a trio of scantily clad cigarette girls who looked as though they had all been small-town beauty pageant winners in a former life descended on their table, making sure they were adequately lit and tobaccoed for the night, was still looking at her as though she were the only woman in the world.

  “So,” Harry said, once they were finally alone. “I guess we’re still in mourning?”

  “What do you mean?” Amanda asked.

  “ ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,” Harry intoned solemnly, “nor customary suits of solemn black … that can denote me truly.” He was quoting Shakespeare, probably. Harry always got that tone when he was quoting Shakespeare.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Amanda said. “If you have something to say to me,” she added with a mischievous grin, “have the decency to say it directly.”

  “Touché,” Harry said with a laugh. “I meant your dress.”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  Harry frowned slightly. “It’s black.”

  “It’s Mainbocher,” Amanda retorted hotly, smoothing the thick crepe fabric lovingly with her fingers. Bought on credit, otherwise it would have emptied her money jar at least three times over. “Anyway, what do you know about clothes, Mr. Borrowed Sports Coat?”

  Grinning, Harry fingered the too-long sleeves of the frayed blazer into which the maître d’ had finally managed to wrestle him. “It’s Monsieur Borrowed Sports Coat to you, missy. Besides, it could be worse. Back home in New York there’s places that when they make you borrow a jacket you know it came off the body of the last wiseguy who got whacked there.”

  “No!”

  “Would I lie to you? There’s a place on Mulberry Street I used to go to with my producer. Best linguini with clam sauce in the city. One day I show up in short sleeves, straight from rehearsal, and the waiter gives me a jacket with a bullet hole, bam, clean through the lapel.” Arranging his hand in the shape of a gun, Harry mimed being shot in the chest.

  “That’s terrible!” Amanda exclaimed. “Wasn’t it too creepy?”

  “Nah.” Harry grinned. “Not for a tough guy like me. Hey,” he continued, leaning forward over his menu, “that’s not your story, is it? You’re not some kind of Sicilian widow? Because if so, you better tell me now before a bunch of goons burst through the door and ruin yet another perfectly good sports coat.”

  “What if I told you I just happen to like wearing black?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you. I’m a writer, Amanda. It’s my beat to look for the story. A beautiful young girl who dresses only in black? That’s what we in the business would call a character choice. There’s got to be a reason for it or it’s just bad writing. So maybe she’s not a widow.” Harry scratched his upper lip thoughtfully. “Maybe she’s in mourning for something else. A parent? A child?”

  “Maybe she’s a cat burglar,” Amanda suggested. “Or one of those Japanese assassins, like in the Charlie Chan pictures.”

  “A ninja. Very imaginative.” Harry nodded. “Let’s think closer to home. More believable. In these troubled times, maybe it’s political. Maybe she’s an anarchist. Or even a Fascist.”

  “Never a Fascist!”

  “Never? The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

  “No!” Amanda laughed helplessly. “No more Shakespeare, please!”

  “Then tell me what the deal is with the black.”

  Amanda hesitated. “Do you really want to know?”

  “’Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out …”

  “Fine!” she cried, jokingly clamping her hands over her ears. Harry made her feel like such a little kid sometimes. “I’ll tell you. But you have to promise not to make fun of me.”

  “Never.” Harry leaned toward her again, staring at her with that burning gaze of his. “I would never make fun of you.”

  “Okay, well …” Amanda dropped her eyes to the tablecloth. And another brick slides out of the wall of Jericho. “Well, when I first came out here, to Hollywood—”

  “From where?” Harry interrupted.

  “Oklahoma,” Amanda said, too startled to lie.

  “The Dust Bowl,” Harry said, raising his eyebrows. “You never told me that before.”

  “Didn’t I?” She meant it to sound lighthearted, but it came out a quavering whisper. “A tiny little town called Arrowhead Falls. You’d never have heard of it in New York, it’s not on any map—”

  Harry shrugged. “Honey, in New York we’d barely heard of Oklahoma.”

  “Right. Anyway, I was very young then. A kid, really—”

  “You’re still a kid.”

  “Stop interrupting me or I’m not going to tell you,” Amanda said.

  Bowing his head in apology, Harry made a zipping motion across his lips, as though to fasten his mouth shut.

  “Thank you,” Amanda said. “I didn’t know anyone here. I didn’t have a job or a school to go to or anything. My parents had … had passed away.” Harry opened his mouth as though he was about to say something but thought better of it. “So to pass the time, I used to walk for hours up and down Wilshire, looking at all the fine shops where the rich ladies would go. The things in the windows were so beautiful. Silk dresses, ropes of pearls, perfume in bottles that looked like they were carved out of diamonds. I’d never seen those kinds of things before; in Arrowhead Falls not even the pictures in magazines looked like that.” She traced a pattern on the tablecloth with her finger, remembering. “I always wanted to go inside, but I didn’t dare; how could I, in my broken shoes and calico dress, talking in that hick accent—honestly, Harry, when I opened my mouth, people thought I was an immigrant, a foreigner, that’s how bad it was. But I tol
d myself, ‘Amanda, one day, you’re going to be a fine lady with money in your pocket. And you’ll go into these shops and the salesgirls will bring you all these beautiful things to look at, each one more beautiful than the next, and you’ll turn up your nose at all of it, just like the fine ladies do.’ ”

  Harry laughed. “And did you?”

  Amanda took a deep breath. “Well, I eventually got a job.” You could call it that, she thought. “And the first time I got paid, I bought a new dress from Woolworth’s, a plaid taffeta, purple and green. Shoes too, to match, and then I splurged on a lipstick at Bullocks. It cost fifty cents and came in a beautiful gold case. And I got all dressed up and walked over to Wilshire and walked into the first store I saw. A jewelry shop.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, summoning the memory. “I stood there at the counter, proud as a peacock in my new Woolworth’s dress, waiting for the salesgirl to bring me whatever I wanted to see. Like a lady.” With a hard swallow, Amanda shook her head. She hated this part of the story. “Well, that salesgirl looked at me like I was something she scraped off the bottom of her shoe. It was like she saw right through me. She knew I was just a cheap little piece of Oklahoma trash who’d gotten above herself. Didn’t say hello, didn’t ask if she could help. Just stared at me until I was too embarrassed to stand there any longer.”

  “That must have been terrible,” Harry said softly.

  “It was one of the worst afternoons of my life,” Amanda whispered. Even now she could still feel her cheeks burning with the shame of it. “But at least I got a good long look at what was in those glass cases. Diamonds and rubies and pearls, on beds of black velvet. I know it sounds crazy, but standing there in that stupid loud taffeta dress, which I’d spent all my money on and was now too ashamed to wear, I looked at that velvet and I thought, ‘Black. I’m going to wear black.’ ” She looked up at Harry, tears glistening in her eyes. “No one can feel ashamed in a black dress. It doesn’t matter if it cost one dollar or a thousand. You might look dull, you might look serious, you might look sad. But one thing you won’t look like is an ignorant little hick from Arrowhead Falls, Oklahoma, who a salesgirl can treat like a dirty old shoe.”