Starstruck

by Rachel Shukert

  The moment she finished, Dane called out to the soda jerk. “Donny, give me a glass of whiskey, will ya? Not the house brand. There’s a bottle of Glenfiddich Leon keeps for me under the cash register.”

  “Right away, Mr. Forrest.”

  Margo looked at Dane in disbelief. She’d just poured out her whole life story. “Did you not listen to anything I just said?”

  Dane’s face was grave. “I listened to every word, Margo. Which is why I need a drink, before I drive straight to Pasadena to murder this Phelps character with my bare hands. Along with anybody else unlucky enough to cross my path.”

  “Phipps,” Margo corrected automatically. But on the inside, a tiny part of her was soaring. Dane wanted to avenge her! He saw her as somebody it was his right, his duty, to defend. He cared about her. In his mind, on some level, she was his. The thought threatened to make the tears come all over again. “I lost my pin,” she said.

  Dane was sipping his drink. “Your what?”

  “My pin. That’s what I was looking for when you came in. I think it must have come off when Phipps was …” She trailed off. “Anyway, it’s gone.”

  Dane frowned. “Not that one you always wear? The funny little gold one, with the pearls?” Margo nodded. “That’s too bad.”

  “I’m surprised you remember it,” she said.

  Dane grinned at her over the rim of his glass. “Margo, I hope you don’t take offense at this, given the night’s ordeal, but I, along with, I imagine, every other man in Hollywood, have spent more than my fair share of happy moments contemplating the precise placement of that pin on your chest.”

  In spite of herself, Margo laughed. “Not every man in Hollywood.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Dane murmured, clearly getting her meaning. “Poor Margo. Did Jimmy give you a terrible shock?”

  “At first, yes,” Margo said thoughtfully. “I was shocked, but also terribly sad.”

  Dane tilted his head. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, it seemed so unfair. I mean, it’s terrible, isn’t it? To have to hide so much of who you are, to never be able to properly be with someone you love. But then I was thinking about what Jimmy says about his career, about how important it is for him to bring joy to people. How he cares more about that than anything else.”

  “About his career?” Dane muttered darkly.

  “No, about being a star. Stars make people happy.” Margo raised her chin. “I’m going to make people happy. It’s the most important thing in the world. And I’ll show everyone back in Pasadena how wrong they were. Everyone who was ever mean to me: Evelyn Gamble and Phipps McKendrick and Doris, and my parents. Especially them.” Emboldened, she reached over for Dane’s glass of Scotch and took a sip. “I’ll show them all.”

  “Oh, Margo,” Dane said. He took her hand in his. His touch sent an electric jolt through her body, leaving her feeling as if she were being pricked all over by tiny needles. “What did I tell you? The only thing being famous does is let people recognize you in restaurants. It doesn’t make anybody love you.”

  “Then what does?” she asked.

  Dane’s liquid green eyes were as sad as she’d ever seen them. “When you find out, be sure to let me know.” Draining the last of his drink, he reached into his pocket for a money clip and threw down a twenty. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”

  It was a gorgeous night. A soft, warm wind from the west rustled the leaves of the palm trees. Bathed in the silvery glow of a three-quarter moon, Olympus looked more like an enchanted city than ever.

  Dane parked the car at the far gate, and together they walked through the deserted lot, their footsteps echoing off the false fronts of the make-believe streets. A cluster of pretty suburban houses, a New York tenement block, a creaking wooden sidewalk supporting a row of rickety shops straight out of the Wild West: paint and plywood with nothing behind them. Margo had always found the staged street a little creepy. The emptiness behind their brightly painted, perfectly rendered facades seemed to hint at something more than the smoke and mirrors of Hollywood, something about the illusory nature of life itself. But tonight, with Dane by her side, she thought it was her favorite street in the world.

  “Do you want to come in?” she asked breathlessly, when they stood at her door.

  Dane was toying with one of the bougainvillea flowers, rubbing the bright pink blossom between the tips of his fingers until the petals crumbled to dust. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea …,” he said slowly.

  “Just for a minute.” She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him go. “I don’t want to be alone. Not yet.”

  Wordlessly, he followed her inside. He looked so big in her little room, Margo thought, so conspicuously, beautifully out of place. “Do you have anything to drink?”

  “There’s some Scotch in the cabinet,” she said. “Not Glenfiddich, but it’ll have to do. Help yourself.”

  What was she supposed to do now? Dane had his back to her, rooting around in the cupboard for some glasses. Should she sit down? Take off her shoes? Affect some flattering pose on the couch that would make him fly to her side? Her eye fell on Gabby’s old phonograph on the end table. Of course.

  “I’m just going to put on some music,” Margo called. Quickly, she flicked through the small stack of records until she found the one she wanted.

  “How Deep Is the Ocean.”

  The familiar clarinet line floated through the room, sweet and sharp and sad. Dane turned around slowly to face her. They stood looking at one another for a moment that seemed to last forever. Finally, Dane spoke.

  “Margo.”

  The way he said it, it wasn’t a question, or the beginning of a sentence, or an opening to say something else. It was just a simple declaration. All on its own. As though her name were the only thing present in his mind.

  Shyly, she stepped toward him. “We danced to this, do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “At the Cocoanut Grove that night. When you cut in on me dancing with Larry Julius. Remember that?”

  “Yes, Margo, I remember.” Dane’s smile was gently mocking. “I remember everything about that night. I remember your blue dress and your pearl pin and how your hair smelled of lilacs. I remember the first time I saw you crying your eyes out on that bench by the soundstage, the way you balled my handkerchief up in your fist like it had done something to you; I remember the look on your face in the commissary later that day, when I spoke to Amanda and not you. And I remember you on the set this morning, riding toward me with the face of a queen and the eyes of a sad little girl.”

  “Dane—”

  “I remember everything about every time I’ve ever seen you.” Dane sighed. “Oh, Margo, what makes you think that you’re the only one?”

  She fell into his arms. His open lips descended on hers urgently, hungrily, as though her kiss were the only thing that could keep him alive. This, Margo thought, feverishly pressing her body against his, pure joy coursing through her veins, his lips moving with hers as though the two of them were speaking their own private language, This. This is the only thing there is.

  “Margo,” Dane whispered hoarsely. “Margaret.”

  “What?” She clung to him desperately, trying to pull his lips back to hers. “What is it?”

  “This … we have to stop.”

  She looked up at him in shock. “What?”

  Dane looked at her mournfully. “You’ve been through so much tonight. I never should have … I should go.”

  “No!” She gasped, feeling as though he had struck her. The thought of his absence, of him being gone from her arms, seemed to cause her almost physical pain. “You can’t!”

  “Please, darling.” He unwrapped her arms from around his neck. “It’s very late. You’re tired, you’re confused … I should never have taken advantage of that.”

  “I’m not a child!” Margo cried, suddenly furious. How dare he open her eyes and then insist she force them back shut
? “I know my own mind.”

  “Darling, you don’t know what you’re saying.…”

  “I do!” Margo insisted. “I’m not a china doll, Dane. I know what it means. You’re not forcing me into anything. It’s not like that between us. I make my own decisions. And what I want is to be with you! I’m not afraid, and I’m not asking for any promises. I just want to be with you the same way Diana was, for us to do the same things you did with her. Please don’t leave now, please.…”

  “What?” Dane suddenly pushed away from her, holding her at arm’s length. “What did you just say?”

  “Don’t leave.”

  “Not that!” His expression was angry. “What did you say about Diana?”

  “Nothing, it doesn’t matter!” Margo cried, suddenly frantic. “I didn’t mean anything by it, only that—”

  “I have to go.”

  “You can’t!” In a panic, she threw herself on him, clutching at his shirt, trying to pull his jacket from his hands. She knew she must look like a maniac, but she couldn’t let him go. Not now. Not after everything. “Don’t go!”

  “Margo, please.” His voice was a horrible, broken rasp. The raw anguish of it froze her in her tracks, long enough for him to get to the door.

  “Dane,” she whispered.

  The door slammed behind him.

  Shaking, Margo fell to her knees. He’s gone, she thought. I threw myself at him and he’s gone. I’m all alone. She crossed her arms over her chest, swaying gently back and forth. I’ll always be all alone.

  Her swaying torso bumped against the coffee table, knocking over Dane’s glass of Scotch. The sharp, sickly smell of the alcohol seeping into the carpet brought her to her senses. Leaping off the floor, she pushed through the door, running. She ran past the bungalows, through the orange grove, out into the maze of fake streets, searching for him, willing him to somehow come back into view, wanting only to see the familiar shape of him looming toward her.

  But it was no use. He was already gone.

  She felt the heaving sobs well up in her again. She pushed them back. She wouldn’t cry. From now on she would be like Diana. She would only cry for the camera.

  She stood in the middle of the street that led nowhere, surrounded by beautiful houses that no one could live in. There was nobody to hear her.

  Margo screamed.

  “Jesus!” The champagne cork popped out of the bottle with such a ferocious bang that Amanda Farraday actually ducked for cover. “That has to be the loudest cork I’ve ever heard.”

  “Oh yeah.” Harry grinned as they watched a waiter upend the fizzy contents of the bottle over a towering pyramid of champagne saucers, letting the golden liquid run in rivulets down the sides to fill the goblets below. “They’re bringing out the heavy artillery tonight.”

  “I guess so,” Amanda said, accepting the glass Harry handed her from the top of the stack. Principal photography had ended on The Nine Days’ Queen only two days before, but from the look of things, Leo Karp—or rather, the small army of housekeepers and butlers and cooks and maids to whom Leo Karp entrusted the care and feeding of his palatial estate—had been planning this party for months. The grounds of the Spanish-style mansion had been transformed into a picture-perfect stretch of English countryside, complete with wild roses, climbing ivy, and a carpet of real bluebells, which had been carted in by the boatload all the way from Kent. On a shimmering lily pond that may or may not have been dug especially for the occasion floated a pair of pure white swans wearing tiny gold crowns, tiny cloaks of ermine, and admirably, Amanda thought, not the slightest expression of humiliation. Apart from the multitiered champagne fountains on every surface, there were endless silver trays of the most delectable tidbits—fresh California dates wrapped in bacon, paper-thin blini spread thickly with sour cream and caviar, tiny china eggcups filled with the famous Olympus chicken soup—all served to the assembled crowd of Hollywood’s good and great by a small battalion of waiters costumed in livery distinguishable from that of the court of Henry VIII only by the Olympus insignia, a lightning bolt piercing a crown of laurels, which replaced the Tudor rose. “If this is the wrap party, I can’t imagine what he’s going to do for the premiere. Fly in the king himself?”

  “Well, they can probably get the one who quit, at least,” Harry said darkly. “That is, if they can tear him away from Berchtesgaden.” Amanda shook her head with a rueful smile. In Harry’s eyes, and in Amanda’s, for that matter, the former Edward VIII was never going to live down that chummy little post-abdication visit to his buddy Adolf Hitler. “But you have to understand,” Harry continued, “this isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill wrap party.”

  “Oh no?”

  “No.” Harry’s eyes twinkled. “What this is here is nothing short of a resurrection.”

  Amanda laughed. “And you’re Jesus Christ, I suppose.”

  “Depends on who you ask,” Harry said. “I mean, every Jewish mother thinks her son is the Messiah.” Amanda laughed. “But no. I’m no expert on the New Testament, but I was thinking more along the lines of Lazarus. One day, he’s lying there dead as a doornail, then some guy in sandals shows up, says the magic words, and boom! He’s up on his feet, back to work the next morning. Isn’t that how the story goes?”

  “Something like that.” What would those old busybody church ladies back in Oklahoma say if they could see her now, getting a lecture on the Bible from a radical New York Jew in the house of the highest-paid man in America? “Does that mean Margo Sterling is Jesus?”

  “Well, I never said it was a perfect metaphor.” Harry followed her eyes across the room to where Margo Sterling stood, being shown off by an ebullient Mr. Karp to a bunch of older men in double-breasted tuxedos—investors, probably, or moneymen from New York. Margo looked as sleek and beautiful as ever in her fluttery lavender beaded gown—clearly a Rex Mandalay original—but even from some distance Amanda could see the listlessness of her manner, the tightness of her practiced smile. She doesn’t look happy, Amanda thought. She looks like she’d rather be anywhere but here. “Hey,” Harry said brightly. “Have I told you how gorgeous you look tonight?”

  Amanda flushed. “Do you think so?” She was wearing the blush-colored gown Harry had given her at the Chateau Marmont. The dress fit like a glove, showing off her narrow waist and pale shoulders to their best advantage, but after all that black, she felt a little shy in something so frothy, so feminine, so pink.

  “Absolutely.” Harry gave a wolf whistle. “Pink is your color, sugar. I’ve got great taste, if I do say so myself.”

  Amanda giggled. “I feel like such a girl.”

  “You are a girl.” Harry turned again toward Margo, now stiffly holding court with yet another group of well-wishers. “And next year, that’s going to be you over there with the big shots fawning all over you. This time next year, you’re going to be a star.”

  Amanda looked back at Margo’s sad eyes, her fixed smile.

  She looked back at Harry. Next year couldn’t come too slowly.

  It should have been a perfect night.

  The Nine Days’ Queen had finished shooting. The picture everyone had once thought was dead had somehow been made. The raw footage, according to the handful of executives, press agents, and general studio yes-men who had seen it, promised a feat of epic moviemaking equal to anything Olympus’s rivals had yet produced. Most miraculously of all, it had somehow come in under budget, which meant that as far as the studio was concerned, Raoul Kurtzman was the greatest leader of men since Alexander the Great, Harry Gordon was the next Shakespeare, and Margo was the belle of the ball.

  Claudette Colbert, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland—stars who just six months before had been little more to Margo than faces in magazine clippings pasted to her bedroom wall—were practically waiting in line to congratulate her and, in the case of Errol Flynn, to lean forward and whisper a deliciously unspeakable suggestion in her ear. Gabby, in a puffy blue dress that made her look like a giant hydrange
a, had squealed with joy, clinging to Margo’s neck as though she’d just come home from a war, and Larry Julius, who could make a grown man cry just by looking at him, was near tears himself, telling her how proud he was of her, how he knew she had it in her all along. She even met Clark Gable, who had laughed his famous uproarious laugh and immediately scribbled “To My Best Girl, Emmeline, with Lots of Love from Clark Gable” on a cocktail napkin when Margo told him the housekeeper’s single condition for her help all those months ago.

  And then there was Leo Karp himself, parading her around on his arm like a trophy, telling her over and over again that she could have anything she wanted. Did she want something to eat? Why not, the filming was finished, she could eat an entire chocolate cake if she wanted, he’d feed it to her himself. Something to drink? He’d crush the grapes, distill the juniper berries, chip the ice. Did she want to go for a ride? She could go down to the garage, pick out whichever of the twenty-nine cars there she wanted, he’d give her the papers, it was hers.

  But the one thing Margo wanted was the one thing she couldn’t have.

  Dane.

  The last few days of shooting had been torture. In their final few scenes together he’d been loving, gallant, heartbreaking—everything Lord Guildford Dudley was supposed to be—until Kurtzman called “Cut!” and it was as if a brick wall had descended between them. He didn’t speak to her between takes, he didn’t praise her at the end of the day, he gave not the slightest indication that what had transpired between them in her bungalow that night would ever be repeated or discussed, or that it had even happened at all. It was as though he had simply willed himself not to see her, which made his tenderness toward her in their scenes together all the more maddening. Who can go back and forth like this? Margo thought wildly. Veering between these two extremes, on camera and off, not knowing what was real and what wasn’t—it was positively schizophrenic. No wonder actors go crazy. If she didn’t talk to him soon, she was going to lose her mind for good.