The Starlet

by Mary McNamara

  “Crap,” Juliette muttered, and hurried after her. “It really is like having a child.” Entering the base of the tower, she could hear Mercy’s footsteps running up the wooden stairs, lightly and surprisingly surefooted. For a minute Juliette was tempted to leave her there, maybe even lock the door just to show her what a brat she was being.

  “Come up, Juliette.” Mercy’s voice floated down and it had never sounded so innocent, so sweet. “Come up the stairs and see the stars, how lovely they are after the rain.”

  I’ve seen plenty of stars, Juliette thought. I’d rather be back in bed.

  When she got to the top, the moon was so bright and clear, the light dazzled her at first as she emerged from the darkness of the tower. But when her eyes adjusted, her heart turned over. Mercy was standing on the low wall that surrounded the top of the tower, her arms raised high above her head. Remembering the fountain in Florence, Juliette froze.

  “If I were you I would bring my bed up here,” Mercy said. “Then you would be sleeping right next to the angels.”

  “Mercy,” Juliette said quietly, still not moving. “Please come down from there.”

  “Why?” she asked, swaying slightly in a way that might have been intentional but turned Juliette’s throat to ice.

  “Because you might fall.”

  “So?” Mercy laughed. “Don’t you think I’m going to die soon anyway? Steve Usher tells me that I will, if I don’t change my ways. And I know my mother thinks I will; that’s why she’s trying to make every penny she can off me before it’s too late. I hate my mother.” As she spoke, she kept turning her head to see Juliette, which made her sway even more. Juliette quickly moved to be in Mercy’s line of vision.

  “What about if you just sit down? Just sit and we’ll talk.”

  “About mothers?”

  “About whatever you want.”

  “All right,” said Mercy, and she sat so quickly, Juliette thought she had fallen. When she could catch her breath, Juliette moved toward her; instead of sitting with her legs on the inside of the wall, Mercy was still facing outward, high above the courtyard. A bit more stable, but not what Juliette had had in mind.

  “Come sit with me,” Mercy said, patting the stone wall beside her.

  “I can’t,” Juliette said. “I’m afraid of heights.”

  “You are? How funny.” Mercy swung her legs and leaned over to look down. “I’m not.”

  Juliette choked back a yelp and slid her backside onto the wall, so that she sat next to Mercy, though in the opposite direction. Her hand hovered near Mercy’s wrist. From here she could at least look into the young woman’s face, could see her eyes wide and huge, the pupils dilated, could hear the breath coming fast and ragged, see the perspiration on Mercy’s face.

  “What’s wrong, Mercy?” she asked quietly. “Why are you so upset?”

  “My mother told the police that I was the one who called with the tip about Lloyd.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yes,” Mercy said impatiently. “Of course. But I didn’t think my mother knew. But she knows everything, or almost everything. Not quite everything. Was your mother like that? Always watching you, wanting to know everything you thought, wanting to know everything you’d done?”

  “No,” Juliette said shortly, willing away the image that rose in her head, her mother laughing and sitting right here, on this wall, lifting a glass of wine that shone like a jewel in the summer sun.

  Mercy sighed. “I think my mother fucked Lloyd just because I did, though I don’t know for the life of me why he fucked her. Maybe he was messed up and she pretended to be me,” she added dreamily. “She does that sometimes.”

  Seeing Juliettte’s face, Mercy laughed.

  “Poor Juliette. You should see how shocked you look. You think you know the worst, don’t you? After all those years at the Pinnacle, covering up for this cheater and that thief. You don’t know the worst.” Mercy reached down her shirt, pulled out a vial, popped the lid off, and had swallowed a pill or two before Juliette could even blink. “Where do you think all the pictures come from, all the dirty details of my life? Like when I od’d last year? Or the stuff about the fire and the accident? Remember that picture of me with blood running down my face? You know who took them? My mother. You know who sold them to those websites? My mother.”

  “Oh, Mercy,” Juliette said. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “Not to a normal person, maybe,” Mercy said. “But she says it’s better to be proactive. That those things are going to come out anyway, so we might as well profit from them.”

  Juliette looked at her doubtfully. She certainly considered Angie capable of many things, but it didn’t even make financial sense for her to exploit Mercy that way—those sorts of stories only devalued the star, and Juliette couldn’t imagine Angie wanting that.

  “I think you must be wrong,” she said gently. “Your mom may not be the easiest person in the world to get along with, but she does want what’s best for you. Because, you know, that’s what’s best for her.”

  Mercy laughed at this.

  “You don’t get it. She hates me. For all the years of schlepping me around. For looking just like she did, only I’m famous.”

  “She doesn’t hate you,” Juliette said automatically. “Mothers and daughters are complicated. You said so yourself.”

  “Remember my little dog? Cupcake? My mother said he ran away the night I came here. That he must have tried to follow me. Like it was my fault. Then I found his collar in her purse. She says he slipped it, but I don’t believe her. I think she has it because it was from Tiffany’s, you know, so she couldn’t just throw that in the river.” Mercy paused for a moment. “I called the police because I don’t think Lloyd died from the drugs or because he accidentally strangled himself whacking off. In fact, I know he didn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  Mercy looked at her sideways.

  “Guess.”

  “You think he killed himself?”

  Mercy shook her head.

  “Well, how do you think he died?”

  Mercy paused for a moment, a strange and vivid moment, but when she spoke, her voice took on that childish singsong again and her smile seemed blurry and unreal.

  “I think someone murdered him.”

  “Really?” Juliette said, her tension fading away. Now Mercy was definitely playing some sort of game, she could tell by how closely the young woman was watching her. “You keep saying things like that but you never elaborate. So who? Who would kill Lloyd? Your mother? Carson? Michael? Tell me, Mercy, did you kill Lloyd?”

  Mercy laughed and swung her legs up and over until she was sitting shoulder to shoulder with Juliette. “I think maybe it was Carson. Carson hates me,” she said.

  “So Carson would kill Lloyd Watson because she hates you?”

  Mercy only smiled, and for a moment Juliette just wanted to slap her. How could anyone, even a movie star, be so self-centered? Maybe she did know something about Lloyd, maybe there was some sort of weird cover-up to get the insurance company to pay, but it certainly was not going to get cleared up by Mercy Talbot, who was much more interested in keeping everyone watching her while she swayed and bowed on top of fountains and towers.

  “Maybe Carson has reason to hate you.”

  Instead of looking startled or hurt, Mercy smiled slyly. “I know. I slept with her husband. So sad. What a loser he was.”

  “Wait, you knew? All this time? I thought . . . I mean Michael said you didn’t remember.”

  Mercy shrugged. “It wasn’t very memorable, but I’m not so far gone as that. Jesus. I may be a slut but I do try to be a semiconscious slut. And what is protocol when you find out you’ve slept with the producer’s husband? Tell me, Juliette. How would you handle that, back at the Pinnacle? What would Devlin do? He’s probably had to deal with the same situation.” There was a pause that Juliette refused to fill. “Did you ever sleep with Devlin? You should, you know.”
Another pause. Mercy shrugged. “Carson should thank me.”

  Juliette could see whatever drug she had taken enter her bloodstream, dragging rambling languor behind it as it moved. “Carson should thank me every day for the rest of her life. Men who cheat are cheaters. I just got it over with quicker for her. It would have happened eventually, no matter what. Cheaters cheat, it’s what they do. We all just do what we were programmed to do until we can’t anymore.”

  “That’s not true,” Juliette said. “People make choices about what they do. You have a choice.”

  “Choices. I hate that word. People only use that word when they don’t like what you’ve done. When was the last time you felt like you had a choice? Michael cheats,” she said spitefully. “Though maybe he won’t cheat on you. He really likes you.” Her voice began to fade into sedated self-pity. “I wish someone liked me, but I think maybe it’s too late for that.” Her head drooped and she slumped against Juliette’s shoulder.

  Realizing Mercy was about to pass out, Juliette quickly rose and guided her back toward the stairs. Carefully, she half carried her down. When they reached the door, Juliette gave up and simply lifted the girl into her arms; she was shocked at how little Mercy weighed. “If your own mother doesn’t even like you,” Mercy whispered as she slumped against Juliette’s neck, “what’s the point anyway?”

  A wave of exquisite sadness crashed against Juliette with such force she rocked backward. Mercy’s bright hair was against Juliette’s mouth, which she set in a grim line, keeping her mind firmly focused on the task of carrying the now inert girl across the yard. It was a question with no bearable answer, which is why Juliette had never allowed herself to ask it.

  Chapter Nine

  I AM NOT GOING to live through this shoot,” Juliette said, following Gabe through one of the back pastures. Behind them, the tip of the tower was just visible over a line of trees that wound alongside one of the vegetable gardens. It was a blue-domed day, breezy and bright, and everywhere she looked, flowers seemed to have burst from limb and ground that very minute. Despite her frustrated tone, she felt her shoulders relax as the wind lifted her hair and stirred her long skirt around her. She and Gabe were in search of a pregnant sow that had escaped its pen, presumably to give birth somewhere in the forest. Though several of the prettiest interns had offered to accompany him, Gabe had specifically, and repeatedly, asked Juliette to join him.

  “You?” said Gabe, peering into a likely-looking bit of gorse. “I thought this was the perfect solution to all our problems. I thought this was your milieu. I just wish the motherfuckers would recycle. How hard is it to separate paper from plastic from glass?”

  “Well, I am ready to go on record as saying I have bitten off more than I can chew. That girl is impossible. She practically falls off the tower the other night and she’s up the next day in full makeup by seven. Me, I am still woozy two days later.”

  “Addicts have a remarkable power of recovery,” Gabe said. “Until, of course, they don’t. Meanwhile, why not let the professionals deal with her?”

  Juliette glanced at her cousin to see if he was being sarcastic or not, but his face looked placid enough, if a little flushed, in the sunshine.

  “Well, I am. Angie can be in charge of her. Steve Usher can be in charge of her. Not that he seems very effective. I don’t even know what she’s on, I searched her room that night and I couldn’t find anything, except freaking gel caps of all sorts of herbal description. And as far as I know, no one puts their drugs in gel caps; I even squeezed a few to see if they’d been, I don’t know, injected with heroin or something. So where is she getting whatever is making her so . . . bizarre?”

  “That is the million-dollar question,” Gabe murmured.

  “Have you talked to her—I mean I know you’ve talked to her, but have you given her your little pitch?”

  “My little pitch? I’ve told her life does not have to be the way it is, I’ve asked her if she thinks she could stop using, for a day, for a week.”

  “And?”

  “And she tells me she’s not using.”

  “Do you think that’s true? Do you think maybe . . .”

  Gabe stopped and stared at her. “I don’t think that is even remotely true,” he said. “I think she is addicted to drugs and alcohol and therefore is incapable of telling the truth. Don’t you even remember?” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Don’t you remember what that was like, to lie so well and so often that you don’t even know what’s true? Have you so completely disconnected yourself from the past that you don’t even remember?”

  Before Juliette could respond, he had shaken his head again and sidled over to a stand of blackberry bushes.

  “Oops, what have we here?” Stooping, he pushed aside several tree boughs to reveal the sow, the telltale white stripe glowing a bit in the shade. She was on her side, panting slightly, with six piglets fastened to her teats.

  “Oooh, look, they’re so adorable,” Juliette said, allowing the tiny ears, the perfect wee feet, to distract her from the sting of Gabe’s question.

  “Yeah, probably just about a day or two old.” He prodded the mass of squirming piglets with one finger. “Look at the ears on that one, and that one,” he said. “I suspected as much. This girl got out a few months ago and it looks like she found true love under the spreading chestnut with some wild boar. Ah, well, there’s no accounting for taste, is there, cuz?” He looked up at her. “And how is Mr. O’Connor?”

  Juliette paused just long enough to let him know she was grateful he was changing the subject. “Who knows?” she said. “I think he was upset when I left him to go running after Mercy. She truly gets under his skin. Though you wouldn’t know, when they’re actually working together—watching them through the monitor, you’d swear it was true love. Of the twenty-first and sixteenth century variety.” She yanked an orange poppy from the ground, and then another one. “Listen to me, like I’m twelve years old. He’s working, that’s what he is. He’s working and he’s absorbed in his work, which is what he should be. I think this movie is taking more out of him than he expected.”

  “The movie?” Gabe asked. “Or all the women involved?” He took one last look at the pigs. “I guess I’ll send some of the interns up to move these guys—it’s not safe to just leave them out like this. Wild boars aren’t above a bit of cannibalism. Look,” he said abruptly, as they headed out of the woods and back into the meadow. “Although I really don’t want to tell you this, you have a right to know.” Juliette looked at him, and though she was knee-deep in wildflowers and butterflies, a chill ran through her. “Usher offered to buy the place. For thirty million euros.”

  This was so unexpected that Juliette actually stopped in her tracks. “Jesus,” she said. “Gabe. Jesus. That’s so much money. I mean, that’s a lot of money. Does he even have that kind of money?”

  Gabriel gave her a withering look. “Well, I don’t think he has it on him in cash. But the man did have six platinum albums. Of glam rock, of course, which is enough to kill me right there. But still, it paid. Besides, he made it sound like he has a few partners in his burgeoning recovery empire. That’s why he wants to buy Cerreta. To start a high-end international recovery retreat.” He paused to let the words hang in the air for a moment and then resumed walking.

  “Wow,” Juliette said, hurrying to catch up with him. “That’s actually not a bad idea. I mean,” she added hastily, “not here, not at Cerreta. But in general, you know, as an idea, something like that would probably really take off. I’m actually amazed no one has thought about it before. What?” she said when Gabriel gave her a look that could only be described as hostile. “Look, I know you got sober in church basements and all that, but that’s not for everyone. When Lindsay Lohan went to an AA meeting in Atwater, there were photos of her all over the Internet before the meeting was over.”

  “Photos she probably authorized. If she didn’t take them herself. Look, I’m not going to argue about the spiritua
l benefit of being in a place like this—why do you think I live here? But sobriety isn’t a vacation destination.”

  Juliette shoved him. She couldn’t help it. She knew he was getting on his soapbox, could see him mentally opening the closet where it lived, could hear him dragging it across the floor. But there was no stopping him, not even with mild physical violence.

  “Quit it,” he said, shoving her back. “I’m serious. This isn’t 1868, we don’t send people off to Swiss sanatoriums and hope the ‘water cure’ takes. Mercy is a perfect example of what is wrong with that kind of thinking. Everyone, including you, keeps telling her what a special case she is, how she has to be protected and spoon-fed and chased around, and how’s that working out? She’s high three days out of five.”

  He was standing still now, surrounded by green fields and ancient forests, with poppies at his feet and fire in his eyes. Juliette sighed and waited but she didn’t have to wait long. “Everyone keeps trying to figure out what’s wrong with her, as if that weren’t perfectly obvious. She’s an addict. She needs to get sober. That’s it. No personal recovery attendant, no fancy rehab, no before-and-after pictures. Just one day at a time, starting today. She doesn’t need some Tuscan retreat to do it, and neither does anyone else.”

  Juliette felt a deep and abiding love for her cousin wash over her. He was a pain in the ass, no doubt, but he was such a wonderfully unrelenting pain in the ass. It wasn’t the fact that he was probably right, it was his unwavering, unremitting certainty that he was right. Juliette had never felt close to that certain about anything in her life.

  “So I’m guessing you want to tell Usher no,” she said.

  “Damn right,” he said.

  “In fact, I’m guessing you already told him no, even though, technically, you can’t make that decision on your own.”