Shadow of the Dolls

by Jacqueline Susann

  “Here, let me show you something cool.” He pressed a few keys, and fireworks exploded across the screen.

  “I have to find a bathroom.”

  “Use ours,” he said, pointing to a door. “And you shouldn’t drink beer, you’re too young for beer.”

  Jenn ran the water while she peed. Dylan’s bathroom! Dylan’s razor, Dylan’s shampoo, Dylan’s deodorant! She pressed one of the towels to her face, but it just smelled like a towel with a little bit of hair conditioner on it.

  There were two doors to the bathroom. Loud music was coming from the one that led to Dylan’s room, a metal band she couldn’t identify. She pushed the door open a little.

  “Hello?” she whispered. “Anyone home?”

  Two bodies were stretched horizontally across the bed. They didn’t hear her as she stepped into the room. They were doing … what were they doing? Dylan was on his back … Gretchen was facedown on top of him … but they weren’t kissing, their heads were in the wrong place, it was all turned around. Gretchen’s mouth was moving up and down … Dylan had one hand on Gretchen’s backside … his other hand was squeezing her breast … Gretchen was moaning with pleasure.…

  The bottle of beer crashed to the floor. Dylan turned his head.

  “You. Get out of here.”

  She ran through the bathroom, past Judd, down the stairs, around the pool, now filled with naked people, she ran all the way home. She willed herself to forget what she had seen, but she could not forget, and she could not fall asleep. Was that what people did? Was that what men wanted? She could never … she would never … but Gretchen had liked it; it was a gross thing, and Gretchen liked it. Jenn wondered what they had done after she left. They had probably laughed about it, laughed at her.

  An hour later there was a knock at the door.

  “Jenn? Can I come in? I know you aren’t asleep.… Jenn? I know you’re mad at me. I’m coming in now.”

  “I never want to see you again.”

  “Jenn, let me explain. It isn’t what you think. I’m coming in.”

  Jenn pulled the covers over her head. Gretchen sat on the edge of her bed.

  “It wasn’t anything serious, Jenn. We were just having some fun. We were kind of drunk, and we were both feeling horny. I was just having fun.”

  “I know! I saw! You were having a great time!”

  “I didn’t mean for you to find out. I know how you feel about Dylan, I’m sorry.”

  “You knew? You knew and you did it anyway? I wouldn’t kiss a boy if I thought you liked him. You’re a slut. You’re a filthy slut.”

  “Hey, no fair. I haven’t been with anyone in months. It just happened, Jenn. It just … I don’t know … I’ve felt so shitty about myself for such a long time, and then Dylan started taking pictures, and telling me I was so beautiful …”

  “He told you that? I don’t remember that.”

  “Oh, Jenn. Come on. I promise it won’t happen again.”

  “It’s too late,” Jenn said. “I never want to see you again.”

  “Come on, look at me. Yell at me if you want to, but at least look at me.”

  “No. Go away.”

  “Okay, fine. We can talk tomorrow.”

  “No, I mean go all the way away. This is my father’s house. You don’t belong here. I want you to leave.”

  “And where exactly do you want me to go.”

  “I don’t care. That’s your problem. We’re not friends anymore, I don’t care what you do.”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  “And I’m going to tell my mother. Just wait till she finds out.”

  “You know, you may not understand this, but what Dylan and I do, what Dylan and I did, it isn’t really wrong. It isn’t anything your mother doesn’t know all about.”

  Jenn pulled the covers back. “You’re disgusting.”

  “She won’t be shocked. Dylan and I are both old enough.”

  “He’s just using you, he doesn’t really love you,” Jenn said.

  “Whatever.”

  “You better be out of here in the morning, or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “Or else, or else …” Jenn tried to think. “You know what I’m going to tell my mother? I’m going to tell her I walked in on you doing it with my father. Then she’ll be shocked. You’ll see what happens when I tell her that.”

  “That’s crazy. You wouldn’t.”

  “Oh yes, I would. I’ll say I got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, and I was feeling sick, so I went to get my father, and when I opened the door there you were. In his bed. Doing it. Doing it, doing it, doing it.”

  “She won’t believe you.”

  “Oh yeah? I’m her daughter. Who are you? You’re no one. You’re just some townie trash. Wait and see. She’ll believe me.”

  “Until she talks to your father, and then she’ll find out you’re lying.”

  “Oh man,” Jenn said. She’d stopped crying now. “You are so dumb. You’re even dumber than you look. I’ll tell her you’ve been flirting with my father all week, and parading around in that stupid little bikini, and I walked in on you … you … sucking each other. She’ll believe it. He’s done way worse. She hates my father. She’ll want to believe it.”

  “You wouldn’t do that to your own mother.”

  “Sucking,” Jenn whispered, “sucking, sucking.”

  “You’re an evil little brat. I can’t believe this.”

  “If you’re here in the morning, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Now get out, or I’ll pick up the phone and call her tonight.”

  Gretchen stood up. “You know what? You don’t deserve Anne. If she knew what a bitch you really are, it would break her heart.”

  “The only thing that’s gonna break her heart is when she finds out you’ve been fucking Lyon Burke all week.”

  “That’s an ugly word. And I don’t care what you look like, you’re an ugly little girl.”

  Gretchen went to her room and packed her bag. She counted her cash: sixty-three dollars and twenty cents. In the kitchen, there was an emergency stash of two hundred dollars rolled up in a cookie tin, and she took that, too. The gas tank in the rental car was nearly full—they hadn’t gone to Santa Monica, they hadn’t gone to Disneyland, they hadn’t gone anywhere they had planned. She backed out of the driveway without turning on the headlights and drove toward a city where she didn’t know a single soul. To the bottom of the hill, without braking, the lights turning green all the way down.

  1991.

  This wig is killing me,” Neely said. “I can’t take the itching anymore, someone get this fucking thing off me.”

  “One more take,” the director said. “And then we can all go home. Jerry, she needs a little more powder.”

  They weren’t even a third of the way through shooting Stage Center, and Neely’s nerves were already beginning to fray. She was constantly arguing with the director, who kept telling Neely to “go warmer” with her character. And he had never even met Helen Lawson! But he insisted they had to show the audience more of Helen’s sympathetic side.

  At least the makeup people had gotten it right. They had redrawn her lips and her eyebrows and used false eyelashes and heavy black eyeliner to make Neely over into a glamorous 1950s screen vixen. It was the scene where Helen learns the love of her life has been shot down while flying over Korea. Neely was pretty sure this guy had never existed or, if he had, was just another one of Helen’s flings, another pretty boy to keep her busy between shows. But the director was adamant that Neely play it like true love.

  “Helen Lawson never loved anyone except herself,” Neely had told him.

  “We’re not looking to win the Pulitzer Prize for biography,” the director replied. “We want to sell tickets. The audience has to love Helen.”

  When the shot was over, Neely pulled off the wig without waiting for the hairdresser and stomped back to her trailer.

  “Out! Out!” she yelled a
t the assistants. “I need some time alone. Geez, can’t a girl pee in peace?” She lay down on the sofa, exhausted. It would take them at least an hour to reassemble her—to take the pins out of her hair, to lift the wig tape from her neck and behind her ears, to remove the individual false lashes, to clean her face, arms, and chest of makeup, to put on the herbal mask that kept her from breaking out, to wash her hair and blow it out so that she’d look decent at dinner, to reapply her everyday makeup … The clock was running, but let them wait. What was the point of being a star if you didn’t get to make people wait?

  There was a knock at the door.

  “I said not yet!” she screamed. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready. Until then, hold your fucking horses.”

  “Still in character, are we?” came a British accent.

  Neely opened the door. “Lyon. What are you doing here?”

  “Just popping in for a look.” He represented the actor who was playing Helen’s manager. “You were extraordinary in that last scene.”

  “Extraordinary good or extraordinary bad?” Neely asked. “Extraordinary” was like “special”—a word people used when they didn’t want to say what they thought.

  “Extraordinary good, extraordinary marvelous. You’ve really captured her.”

  “Yeah, I have, haven’t I.”

  “You are Helen Lawson.”

  “I am, amn’t I,” Neely said.

  “Except better.”

  “And better looking!” Neely said. “You want some tea or something?”

  They sat on two chintz-covered armchairs, facing each other. “What is this?” Lyon asked, sipping his tea. “It tastes like vegetable broth.”

  “It’s disgusting, I know, but it’s really good for you.” She waved her long red nails at the kitchenette. “No booze in here, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  They chatted for a few minutes, exchanging gossip.

  “Well. It was lovely to see you again,” Lyon said.

  “You’re leaving?” Neely said. She had nowhere to go—Dave was in New York, the boys were at Ted’s house, and she had stopped socializing with the rest of the cast after the first week of shooting. She didn’t like to be alone at night; thinking about Helen all day left her emotionally drained and in need of distraction. But you could never really make plans to see people during a film. You never knew how late the shooting would go and what kind of shape you’d be in when the day was over. Lyon wasn’t her friend, but it wouldn’t kill him to take her to dinner. “I thought maybe we could grab a bite.”

  “I’d love to, but I already have plans.”

  “It’s just that I’m working on this scene, it’s the late sixties and Helen is realizing she might never have children, and I don’t know. It just isn’t working for me. Something is missing. I thought maybe you could help me out. You know, tell me some of the old stories, help fill me in. But who wants to go down memory lane, right? I guess that wasn’t such a happy time for you.” She dipped a cotton puff in face cream and massaged it up and down her neck.

  Lyon thought back to the sixties. He was in his late twenties, just arrived in New York from London to work at Henry’s agency, and the city was one nonstop party, a party where there were no rules except one: Everyone had to have a good time. Those were his glory years.

  “I loved the sixties,” he said.

  “Well, what would I know. I was just a kid watching it all on television.”

  “We could do an early dinner in Santa Monica,” he said.

  “Great, I’ll be outta here in twenty minutes. Pick me up at the gate.” She watched him leave the set. Still not an extra ounce on him, she thought; he still walked like a young man.

  “So where is everyone!” she yelled. “Get your asses over here, get this shit off my face!” The makeup people came scurrying over. “And get out the hot rollers,” she said. “I have a date.”

  Lyon took her to a restaurant where they specialized in singleserving pizzas with unusual toppings. He told her stories of his early days in New York—the clubs, the music, the clothing, the haircuts. He didn’t talk about the women, but Neely knew there had been plenty of them.

  “What is it with all the goat cheese on menus these days?” Neely said. “And where did all these goats come from, all of a sudden?” She stared at her pizza: goat cheese, apples, and fresh rosemary. “I think it probably tastes better if you don’t think about what’s in it.”

  When the waiter came around and asked if they would like another glass of wine, Neely nodded.

  “I’m allowed,” she said. “Alcohol was never really my problem.”

  Lyon smiled. “Believe me, I’m not monitoring your behavior.”

  “It’s just the hard stuff, no booze, but it’s nice to have wine with dinner a couple of nights a week,” she said. “I get so wound up on the set. I think I forgot what a grind it all can be.” She looked around the room; everyone was dressed casually, in jeans and T-shirts, but it was an A-list crowd, mostly movie people with a few television actors thrown in. Lyon always knew the hot places. They had gotten one of the best tables without a reservation. And unlike Dave, Lyon didn’t act chummy with the captain or call the waiters by name. Lyon was pure class.

  She had to give him credit: he had almost lost everything, but he had managed to fight his way back to the top in just a few short years. He had kept several of his biggest clients and added some young actors who were starting to make names for themselves in smaller independent films. Neely believed that anyone with determination and nerve could make it in Hollywood—the test was whether you could pick yourself up and do it all over again after that first time you got knocked flat on your back. She had done it herself more than once. And now Lyon had done it, too.

  Maybe Anne had been a little too hard on him. So he fooled around; what man didn’t? A man who didn’t fool around a little on the side probably didn’t have a very strong sex drive. And what did Anne have now? Nothing: no boyfriend, no prospects, just some overgrown preppie who called her up for a desperation fuck three times a year. Anne had made a mistake, the same one most women made: she took sex too seriously.

  “I bet you were a real stud back then,” Neely said, circling the rim of her wineglass with her pinkie. “I can just picture you with long hair and a Nehru jacket.”

  “And a beard!” Lyon said. “Though that didn’t last long.”

  “I bet you looked great in a beard.”

  “Every man should grow one once,” Lyon said.

  “Sometimes I think I was born too late,” Neely said. “I missed all the fun stuff.” She did the math. How old was Lyon now? Forty-eight? Forty-nine? It wasn’t fair, how some men just got better looking with age, while women just fell apart.

  “How old are you now?” Lyon said. “If I’m allowed to ask.”

  “Officially?” Neely said. She knew that in this light she could easily pass for a woman in her late twenties.

  “Ah,” Lyon said. “I see. Hollywood arithmetic. Well, you look extraordinary. Extraordinary good.”

  The wine was making her feel warm everywhere. Oh, what the hell, she thought, who really cares? Anyone who would care was thousands of miles away. She rested her elbows on the table and cupped her face in her hands. A bit of red lace peeked out from the deep V-neck of her black T-shirt.

  “And I feel extraordinary good,” she said. Lyon had deep lines in his face, but he still seemed far from fifty. That was another thing Neely knew: A man felt only as old as the woman sitting across from him. She looked at his hands, then slowly raised her eyes, to his shoulders, to his mouth, and she met his gaze and held it, neither one of them blinking for the longest time.

  “You really haven’t changed one bit,” he said.

  “Neither have you,” she said.

  They drove home, listening to an old Miles Davis record. She sat with her legs crossed, her flowered skirt falling loosely around her knees.

  “Come in for a drink?” she said when they pulled into h
er driveway.

  “It’s late,” he said. “Maybe another time.” He offered his right hand.

  She lifted his hand to her mouth and laid his fingers on her lips.

  “Neely,” he said. An old ballad began to play, the soft bass carrying the melody.

  “Shhhh, don’t talk.” She took the tips of his fingers between her lips and held them, softly, just the beginning of a kiss.

  “Neely,” he said, his voice lower.

  She closed her eyes and arched her head back. He pressed his thumb against her lips and she opened her mouth, just a little, just enough, and he ran his thumb along her top teeth, across her tongue, and she rolled her tongue around his thumb. It all came back to her, the feel of his kisses, the smell of sandalwood and limes, the way he reached under her shirt and unfastened her bra—Lyon always liked it with some clothes left on, Lyon always liked it a little dirty—and she heard the soft purr of his seat moving back, and he pulled her on top of him, pulled her skirt up, the music had stopped, and there was nothing but the sound of their own breath and bare skin against smooth leather.

  “I’ll take that drink now,” he said. The lights in the house had come on automatically with sunset; she turned them off one by one as they went upstairs.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Lyon said. They were lying in bed, facing each other, only their toes touching.

  “My mind is a complete blank,” she said. I deserve this, she thought, I deserve to have what I want.

  “Mine too,” he said. “An utterly happy blank.” We deserve each other, he thought. All the years had slipped away. He had forgotten what it was like to be with a woman who knew the worst in you and wanted you anyway.

  He took a sip of the vodka, took a chunk of ice and crushed it between his back teeth.

  “That doesn’t hurt?” she asked.

  “I like the cold,” he said, stretching his arms in a yawn, rolling away from her. “Sweet dreams.”

  It was the first week of November, and Anne was watching an allnews station, knitting fisherman’s caps for the people who worked on her show. It took two nights to knit each cap; by the second week of December she’d have made enough to cover Christmas presents for everyone on her list. The gray merino felt soft between her fingers. Knitting soothed her, especially this pattern, simple ribbed rounds on five wooden needles that she had been given by her aunt Amy for her eleventh birthday. Jenn was already in bed, reading Jane Austen.