Starstruck

by Rachel Shukert

  Harry’s eyes were very bright as he took Amanda’s hand and squeezed it, hard. “Thank you for telling me that.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said quickly. The waiter, arriving with their drinks, saved her from having to say any more. Seizing her martini by the stem, Amanda took a long, restorative sip. “Okay, buddy,” she said, feeling steadier. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn?” Harry looked puzzled.

  “Didn’t you have something to tell me?” she asked pleasantly. “That’s how you made it sound on the telephone.”

  “Aha.” Waggling his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx, Harry took a small sip of his drink. “If you mean to suggest, my dear Watson, that I would need a special reason to escort you to an establishment at which the price of a simple chicken dinner for one could feed a hungry family of five for a week, then congratulations, because you are absolutely correct.”

  Amanda smiled. Despite its faux French menu and the swanky cream-and-gold interior—not to mention the high-stakes gambling tucked discreetly away in the back room—the Trocadero was actually one of the more reasonably priced places on the Sunset Strip. God help Harry if she ever managed to drag him to the Cocoanut Grove or the Vendome. He’d probably drown himself in the lobster bisque. “Well, what is it?”

  Harry’s face was lit up like a candle. “It’s good news. Very, very exciting news.” He paused dramatically, taking another sip of Scotch. “As of this week, I will no longer be Harry Gordon, nominal screenwriter, glorified errand boy, and knock-around slob. No, no.” He puffed out his chest proudly. “I am going to be Harry Gordon, actual screenwriter, with an actual, genuine, honest-to-God movie to my name.”

  “Harry!” Amanda squealed. “You don’t mean—”

  “That’s right. As of tomorrow, The Nine Days’ Queen officially goes back into production.”

  Amanda felt her jaw practically drop to the floor. “They found Diana?” she gasped. “Diana’s back?”

  “Even better.” Harry beamed, pointing in her direction. A burst of desperate, unreasonable hope suddenly surged through Amanda. Me? she thought, with joyful disbelief. They’re giving the part to me? “Look over there.”

  Deflated, Amanda followed Harry’s extended finger to the doorway, where a phalanx of photographers, like musicians directed by some invisible conductor, had suddenly converged. Through the blinding flash of popping lights, Amanda caught a glimpse of Jimmy Molloy’s grinning face. Beside him stood the dark outline of a slim blonde in a silver dress, her face shrouded in a gauzy evening veil. Standing regally at attention, her pale hair gleaming white, she lifted the veil and turned her face toward the light. Amanda couldn’t hold back her astounded gasp. She looked so much like Diana it was like seeing a ghost.

  “Margo Sterling,” Harry said proudly. “Pretty amazing, don’t you think?”

  “Smile, Margo,” Jimmy muttered through his clenched teeth. “Smile for the nice men.”

  Obediently, Margo turned up the corners of her painstakingly painted mouth, careful to keep her chin tilted down and her cheeks held in, the way her smiling instructor had shown her. A smiling instructor. He had been waiting outside her bungalow the moment she’d returned from her fateful audience with Leo Karp, ready and eager to tell her that her right incisor was deformed and her eyes crinkled unflatteringly, so she must always be careful not to smile too wide. After mercilessly coaxing her lips and cheek muscles through a variety of iterations, all of which seemed to have their own unsettling name—the Princess Pout, the Girl-Next-Door Grin, the Southern Belle Simper—they had finally settled on a bemused Mona Lisa Smirk, which radiated oodles of glamour and absolutely no joy.

  “That’s a good girl,” Jimmy muttered as flashbulbs popped all around them inside the Trocadero. “Now turn. Let them get a good shot of the dress.”

  Even with the double-layered rubber girdle she was wearing, she felt as though her dress were bursting at the seams. “I can’t breathe,” she murmured back to Jimmy. “I feel like a trussed chicken.”

  “Darling, don’t be silly.” Jimmy replied smoothly, expertly pivoting her to the front again. “It’s only how you look that matters.”

  Isn’t that the truth, Margo thought. Nothing had prepared her for the scrutiny she found herself under as Jimmy Molloy’s latest sweetheart and Olympus Studio’s newest star. The smiling instructor had just been the tip of the iceberg. Experts descended on her normally quiet bungalow, day and night, each one eager to perform a dizzying and (she was assured) highly necessary array of beauty treatments and therapies. The “improvements,” as they were called, had one major element in common: each one was more painful and invasive than the last. A team of hairdressers peroxided and straightened her hair. Makeup artists plucked and waxed her eyebrows until beads of blood stood out on her brow. A team of dressers had wheeled in rack after rack of heart-stoppingly stylish clothes personally selected by Rex Mandalay, the young Australian genius newly in charge of Olympus’s wardrobe department.

  “There must be some mistake.” Margo had gasped for breath as Rex gave the zipper of a tiny lavender column of bias-cut satin a last futile tug.

  Rex snorted. “I’ll say. You’re going to have to reduce.” He was wearing pants as tight as a ballet dancer’s.

  “Reduce?” Margo looked down at her body, packed like a sausage into the minuscule gown. “But most of these clothes wouldn’t fit a child!”

  “The camera adds ten pounds,” Rex said, “which means you need to lose twenty. I’ll tell the commissary to start you on the official studio diet. Grapefruit for breakfast, a very small steak for lunch, nothing for dinner. No bread, no sweets, and absolutely no eating between meals. The weight will come off in no time.”

  I’ll starve, Margo thought helplessly. They’re trying to starve me to death. “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Then you’ll go to the studio doctor and he’ll give you some pills.”

  Margo thought of Gabby and the vials in her handbag. “No,” she said firmly, “no pills.”

  Rex shrugged. “I suppose you could always have your bottom ribs removed.”

  Margo yelped. “Why on earth would I do that?”

  “Everyone’s doing it now, now that the waist is back. There’s a marvelous man in the Bahamas who did the Duchess of Windsor’s.” Thoughtfully, Rex placed a hand on each side of his own slim midsection, squeezing the sides into a tapering V. “Something to think about. Mark my words, this time next year, the wasp waist will be back with a vengeance.” Stepping closer, he peered into her face with an appraising look. “We might do something about your nose as well.”

  “My nose?” Margo repeated. “What’s wrong with my nose?”

  “The tip is a little on the bulbous side. And there’s a bump, right here.” His finger felt like ice as he tapped it. “You might not notice now, but on the screen you see every little imperfection. There’s a man in Berlin who could do the job, if we can get you over there before they start another war. It would really look much better on camera.”

  On camera. Everything was for the camera. She wasn’t Margaret Frobisher anymore; she wasn’t even really Margo Sterling. She was a thing on display, powdered, primped, and starving, in a dress that didn’t fit, on the arm of a man she didn’t love. The camera ruled them all.

  “Aw, shucks, I knew Margie was the girl for me the first time I saw her,” Jimmy was saying now as a man from the Hollywood Reporter scribbled notes in his pad. “And then I just did what any fella would do. I wooed her. Sent her present after present, each one nicer than the last, until she finally said she’d be my girl. And the best part is, you and the folks at home can read all about it, just as soon as the newest issue of Picture Palace hits newsstands next week.” He chuckled heartily, jiggling his arm around her waist. “Isn’t that right, honey?”

  “Sure,” Margo said, gritting her teeth at the memory of that asinine photo shoot they’d suffered through the day before. Jimmy, mugging wildly in a Santa hat, while sh
e pretended to unwrap box after box, oohing and aahing over the contents—an enormous stuffed panda, a string of pearls, a white mink cape, all of which would be promptly returned to the studio’s props department as soon as the photographer left. Jimmy, who was drinking heavily and prone to disappearing for long periods of time between shots, had barely spoken to her, except to tell her and anyone else who would listen what an idiot he felt like. That was what Picture Palace would hold up to its readers as the epitome of young love. To think she actually used to take that stuff seriously! She’d had more romantic afternoons at the dentist’s office.

  “Culminating with a pony, is that right?” the reporter asked.

  Jimmy nodded proudly. “A genuine Thoroughbred California palomino. To match her beautiful hair. We’ll be posing for photographs with it up at the stables in a few days, so stay in touch with the press office before all the good shots are taken.”

  “And what about you, Miss Sterling?” asked a woman in a purple dress. “When did you realize how you felt about Jimmy?”

  When Leo Karp sat me down in his office and told me it was either Jimmy or my job. Helplessly, Margo cast an eye around the supper club, trying to stall for time. Like an iron filing to a magnet, her gaze was drawn directly to Dane Forrest.

  Of course he’d be here, she thought bitterly. He was standing next to a table, his arm around a peroxided blonde in a blue fox stole. Margo had never seen her before, but even from across the room it was clear she was not the sort of girl who would ever darken the doorway of the Orange Grove Academy. The blonde was laughing uproariously at something Dane had said, throwing her head far enough back to make sure he got a good look down her red sequined gown. He glanced up as he pulled out a chair for his companion, and for a single, breathless moment, Margo thought he caught her gaze. Even from all the way across the room, she could make out the deep green of his eyes.

  “Miss Sterling,” pressed the woman. “How did you know Jimmy was the guy for you?”

  The words fell out in a tumble. “I’d loved him ever so long, from the pictures. And then we met by chance my first day on the lot. I was awfully scared, and he was so kind. I felt as though he understood me. As though we could understand each other. As though I could tell him anything and he’d understand.”

  “Not bad,” Jimmy murmured, so only she could hear. “Not bad at all.”

  “How about a kiss?” asked a reporter.

  “Sure!” Jimmy said. “Whaddya say, honey? Aw, look at the kid, she’s shy.”

  Dane had his arm around the blonde again. He was staring into her eyes with that special attentive gaze that made you feel like you were the only girl in the world. He had looked at Margo that way. And Diana. And who knows how many other hundreds of girls.

  Suddenly, Dane was gone. Jimmy’s face loomed before her, blocking her view. “Come on, Margo,” he hissed. “Just one. For the camera.”

  Oh God, no. They were kissing. They were actually kissing right there for everyone to see. And of course, the flashbulbs were popping away.

  Under the table, Gabby dug her fingernails so hard into her palms she thought she would draw blood. She almost hoped she did. She imagined the blood running warm and sticky and red down her wrists, smeared thickly all over the front of her white taffeta dress. It would be like something out of a horror movie, like the Bride of Frankenstein. Then maybe her outsides would match the way she felt inside.

  America’s Sweethearts. America’s Cinderella Lands Prince Charming. The day those headlines started running was one of the worst of Gabby Preston’s young life. Maybe the worst, if you didn’t count the day her sister Frankie ran off. While all those little nobodies out there were swooning over the photo spread of Jimmy in white tie and tails, laughingly pretending to fit a glass slipper on a ball-gowned Margo’s dainty foot, all Gabby could see was the boy she’d danced with, daydreamed of, even thought she loved for more than a year, proclaiming his undying affection for her best friend. Best friend. That was a laugh. Some friend Margo had turned out to be. It was like Viola always said. In show business, the only real friend you had was yourself.

  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 f
ew 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.”