There was only one thing wrong with the famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood: it looked so much like something out of the movies, it was hard to remember it was a real place.
Swaying palm trees strung with thousands of tiny white lights seemed to grow directly out of the floor, forming a sparkling green canopy beneath the graceful Moorish arches. Beside the polished dance floor was a mirrored stage, complete with a twenty-one-piece orchestra and a beautiful singer draped in silver sequins and blue gardenias. The midnight-blue ceiling was painted to look like the night sky, complete with hundreds of twinkling stars. But the real stars, of course, were below, gliding between tables, glittering on the dance floor. Women dripping with diamonds, men in dinner jackets as white as their gleaming toothpaste smiles.
It was a beautiful room filled with beautiful people, and tonight, for the first time, Margo Sterling was one of them. She practically had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. If only Gabby weren’t in such a foul mood, she thought, everything would be perfect.
From the moment Margo had moved into the small bungalow on the studio lot, Gabby Preston had been a constant presence, phoning several times a day with some new piece of gossip, turning up at the door at odd hours bearing various small “housewarming” gifts: a bouquet of orange blossom cut from the trees outside, a lemon cake baked by Viola, even a worn record player and a stack of old 78s. Margo was grateful. The little gifts and incessant chatter made the stark bungalow, with its smudged walls and furnishings that had seen generations of hopefuls come and go, seem almost like a home. Better yet, they helped to shut out the increasingly terrifying fact that she had walked out of her safe life with no idea what the future would hold. She was on her own now, but with Gabby there, she didn’t feel so alone.
Still, Gabby’s high-octane personality could be a little exhausting, and thanks to Dr. Lipkin and his miracle pills, her grasp on the concept of waking hours, as opposed to sleeping hours, was creative at best. It had been barely light that morning when Gabby had turned up at Margo’s door, practically climbing out of her skin with excitement. “Did you hear? We’re going out together on an engagement tonight! Aren’t you excited?”
“I might be,” Margo had said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, “if it weren’t five o’clock in the morning.”
“But a real engagement! I could just die!”
“Wait.” Margo scowled sleepily in confusion. “An engagement? You’re getting married?”
“Honestly, Margo, sometimes I think you don’t know anything. An engagement is a night out on the town. The studio arranges it all. They choose your escort, dress you up in the most gorgeous gown, and send you out to one of the glamorous, exclusive places where all the stars go, and the next day your picture is in all the papers and everyone is talking about you. I’ve been on one or two before, of course, but only early in the evening, and always with Viola, which makes it all about as magical as a sack of lard. But not tonight! Tonight she’s got to stay at home and knit, and guess who my escort is going to be!”
Margo blinked.
Gabby couldn’t wait. “No, you’ll never guess, I’ll tell you. It’s Jimmy! Jimmy Molloy!”
“Well, that’s just swell,” Margo said. Swell was about as enthusiastic as she could get before breakfast.
“Swell isn’t the word for it! It’s positively stupendous! I told you they’re putting us together! It’ll be announced any day, I’m sure of it. I can see the headlines now.” Eyes shining, Gabby swept her hand through the air, across an imaginary front page. “Olympus’s Singing Sweethearts Blow Up Box Office. No,” she interrupted herself. “Singing Steadies. That’s better than sweethearts, don’t you think? More grown-up.”
“Do I have an escort?”
“Don’t you ever open your mailbox? Of course you do. You’re being escorted by Larry Julius, and don’t you dare look disappointed,” she said, wagging a finger at Margo’s obvious dismay. “You don’t think he bothers with just anyone, do you? The studio couldn’t give you a bigger stamp of approval if you walked in on the arm of Mr. Karp himself. By this time tomorrow, we’re going to be the two most envied girls in Hollywood.” Beaming, she hugged herself. “I could die of happiness!”
But now that they were at the Cocoanut Grove, Gabby looked anything but happy. Her small face was a thundercloud under a hairdo of beribboned sausages as she reached over to seize a handful of the silken skirt of Margo’s dress, nearly knocking over the waiter who was opening the champagne for their table.
“That’s pretty,” Gabby grumbled.
In truth, Margo’s dress was a lot more than pretty. After the banana dress incident, Margo had been a little apprehensive at seeing Sadie on her doorstep with a garment bag, but all her doubts had vanished the moment she saw the bias-cut satin gown with a plunging back in a shade of silvery blue that matched her eyes. The studio had lent her a delicate sapphire bracelet with earrings to match, and to one of the shoulder straps, done in a contrasting black velvet, she had affixed her little pearl pin. It was startlingly chic, more like something out of a fashion magazine than what your typical flashy Hollywood starlet would wear.
“Yours is nice too,” Margo said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Gabby had been coaxed, clearly against her will, into a frilly concoction of apricot tulle with a stiff crinoline skirt, the kind of dress a child might wear to a fancy party. “You look really pretty.”
“Don’t patronize me. I look like one of those creepy legless dolls Viola hides the extra roll of toilet paper under in the bathroom.” Gabby’s face crumpled. “Why do they make me wear these stupid baby dresses? Why can’t I have a dress like yours?”
“Image, darling,” Jimmy Molloy answered, politely holding out to the girls his gold cigarette case, which Larry Julius promptly declined on their behalf. “You can’t go full glamour like the duchess here. You’re Everyone’s Kid Sister. But don’t you worry, honey pie. There’s a lot of money in being America’s Sweetheart. Isn’t that right, Margo?” He winked at her.
Margo wasn’t quite sure what she thought of Jimmy. He was certainly awfully friendly, kissing her hand when they’d met and making a big show of pretending his eyeballs were popping out of his head when he saw her, like a wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon. But there was something a little bit strange about the way he never seemed to turn off.
“And, Gabby, you just be a good girl and do what the nice men tell you,” Jimmy said, chucking her on the chin. “Before you know it, you’ll have enough dough in the oven to get yourself a Schiaparelli for every day of the week.”
“I don’t need a shopperelly.” Gabby pouted. “I just want a pretty dress.”
“A Schiaparelli is a dress, silly.” Grinning, Jimmy curled his finger below his nose like a Gallic mustache. “She is all zee rage with the haute monde in gay Paree.”
“Oat mound? What on earth is an oat mound?”
“Haute monde. It means ‘high society’ in French,” Margo said, instantly regretting it when she saw the humiliated look on her friend’s face. The last thing she wanted to do was show Gabby up in front of Jimmy. “They probably only put you in that dress because they couldn’t find anything else to fit you,” she added quickly. “You’ve lost so much weight.”
Gabby’s face lit up. “Do you really think so?”
“I know so. If I didn’t know better, I’d be worried.”
Gabby beamed, smoothing the cloth of her dress over her svelte waist. Her hands, Margo noticed, shook slightly. “Yeah, well, now my chest is gone too. Just my luck. As if I didn’t look young enough. Next time you see me, they’ll probably have me in a baby bonnet.”
“Look over there, Margo,” Larry Julius interjected. With a subtle tilt of his cigarette, he indicated a raven-haired beauty draped in white silk and about fifteen ropes of huge black pearls gliding toward an adjacent table. “Hedy Lamarr. See the way she moves? Now, that’s the way you make an entrance.”
“And look over there.” Gabby smirked. Obviously, Viola had never told her it was rude to point. “There’s that Amanda Farraday.”
Her stomach clenching, Margo followed Gabby’s accusatory finger to the gorgeous girl standing in the middle of the maze of tables. She was wearing black, as usual, but hers was a dress that Margo was pretty sure she’d never find on her own wardrobe rack: impossibly low-cut, and covered from top to bottom in jet paillettes, a diamond-shaped cutout just below the bust exposing a creamy swath of bare skin. One of her hands was tucked into a luxurious cloud of sleek fur. The other was clinging to the arm of a portly gray-haired gentleman nearly old enough to be her grandfather.
“She’s not with Dane.”
She whispered it under her breath, a private sigh of relief, but Larry Julius missed nothing. “Dane Forrest?” he asked, his sharp eyes coolly surveying Margo. “Did you expect her to be?”
“Oh, Margo and I saw them leave the commissary together the other day,” Gabby said crankily. “They tried to slip out separately so nobody would notice them.”
“Oh, sure,” Gabby said. “Margo could hardly take her eyes off him, could you, Margo?”
“We had just shot my screen test together,” Margo mumbled, staring down at her crystal saucer of champagne. “I was just wondering if I should try to say hello, that’s all.”
Larry Julius expelled a thoughtful cloud of cigarette smoke from what Margo was sure were terribly overwhelmed lungs. “Well. That’s very interesting.”
“Oh, that’s not even the half of it,” Gabby said cheerfully. “With that Amanda girl, I mean. Margo saw her earlier that same day, necking with some writer in his office.” God, Margo thought, doesn’t Gabby forget anything? For a girl who was so prone to proclaiming her academic ignorance, she had a mind like a steel trap. She could have made a heck of a trial lawyer, if anyone had ever bothered to teach her to read.
“Harry Gordon, I should think,” Larry said.
“Harry Gordon?” Gabby’s eyes were wide. “Not that Commie from New York who’s supposed to be writing my next picture? The vaudeville musical?” Gabby had been crowing nonstop for days about her new picture. A standard rags-to-riches musical, it was nevertheless the first vehicle the studio had commissioned for Gabby to star in alone, and she was convinced it was going to make millions of dollars and win her every prize going, including an Academy Award. “Not some kind of juvenile Oscar either, like they gave Shirley Temple,” Gabby sneered. “A real Oscar, for Best Actress. I mean, how could I lose? It’s being written just for me! It’s exactly the story of my life!”
“The very same,” Larry said.
Gabby snorted. “Covering all the bases, just like I said to Margo. Good thing she can’t sing.”
“Let’s have some champagne,” Jimmy said quickly, raising his glass. “To old friends and new, to fame and fortune and dazzling success. To Hollywood!”
“To Hollywood.” They all drank. Margo had never tasted champagne before. The golden bubbles, sweet and faintly sour, tickled her throat. An effervescent warmth spread down her neck and into her chest. Like drinking a glass full of starlight, she thought, her whole body tingling with pleasure.
“Who’s that she’s with, anyway?” The champagne had clearly not had the same tempering effect on Gabby, although she had drunk off her glass in a single gulp and was helping herself to another one. “He looks like he’s ready for the grave.”
Larry put down his glass, from which he had taken only the tiniest of sips. “His name is Oscar Zellman,” Larry said quietly. “I’m surprised you don’t know who he is. He ran a major production unit at Olympus until he left three years ago to set up as an independent. He’s doing quite well for himself, much to Karp’s dismay. Produced three of the ten Best Picture nominees last year, and without a studio behind him.”
Jimmy hooted. “Atta girl, Amanda! There’s a girl who knows where she’s going.”
“Well, I guess she wised up.” Gabby tossed back her second glass. “I mean, Dane Forrest might be one of the biggest stars on the planet, but he’s hardly the jackpot for any girl, is he?”
Margo could practically feel Larry Julius’s eyes boring into her. “What do you mean by that?”
“Yeah, what gives?” Jimmy asked.
“Darlings, don’t play dumb.” The alcohol was loosening Gabby’s already loose tongue. “It’s all out in the open now anyway, isn’t it? In the papers he and Diana Chesterfield might have been on the rocks just prior to her, shall we say … sudden departure, but everybody knows what really happened.”
Larry leaned toward Gabby. “Really.” His voice had dropped to a dangerous purr, and his black eyes glittered like burning coals. Since she had arrived at Olympus, Margo had heard whispers about some of the more unsavory aspects of Larry’s job, about the lengths to which he would go to keep the wrong story out of the papers or the right person quiet. For the first time she thought they might be true. “And just what does everybody know?”
“Well, far be it from me to spread nasty gossip,” Gabby continued blithely. She was well into her third glass of champagne. “But I just heard she went off to have a baby. Among other things.”
“What other things?” Larry prodded, in that same terrible voice. Out of the corner of her eye, Margo saw a uniformed cigarette girl begin to approach the table, only to scurry away at the last moment, like a tiny fish suddenly aware that the cave she is about to swim into is actually the open mouth of a shark.
Gabby flashed her dimples. “Things that a child of my tender years really ought not to know about. You couldn’t possibly expect me to repeat them.”
“Gabby Preston, you are one ripe tomato.” Jimmy Molloy burst out laughing. “You play your cards right, honey, and you could give Picture Palace a run for its money. Now.” Briskly, he snapped his fingers for the waiter. “Let’s get some more champagne, since you drank this bottle all up yourself, you naughty little wastrel. And then I’d like everyone to put their attention back where it belongs: on me. I heard the darnedest thing happened at Warner Brothers the other day.…”
Jimmy launched into his story, a rambling yarn about some dim-bulb extra who became hysterical when she thought they were throwing a real baby out a fifth-story window during a firefighting sequence, as Gabby hung on his every word.
But all Margo could think about was Dane. Could Diana Chesterfield’s mysterious disappearance have something to do with him? Had she really gone off to have his baby … or worse? Or maybe it was all just idle gossip. Margo didn’t hold much truck with gossip, having been the subject of enough of it herself over the years. All those rumors Evelyn Gamble used to spread about her … If even half of that garbage were true, Margo would have had a past to rival … well, Amanda Farraday’s.
But suppose, just suppose, this rumor was true? Suppose Dane had made a … mistake with Diana? So what? That didn’t necessarily make him a cad, any more than it made Diana a “ruined woman.” That way of thinking was like something out of the Victorian Age. The flappers of the twenties, the brash young women who bobbed their hair and drank gin and did as they liked with men, had done away with all that for good, and the Great Depression was supposed to have swept away what was left. Even in the rarified world of Pasadena high society, Margo had heard about the kind of distasteful things less fortunate women and girls, even the good, respectable, churchgoing types, had done just to survive in the hardscrabble early years of the Depression. Were those women ruined? Was Diana? Remembering the electric warmth of Dane’s kiss the day of her screen test, Margo felt a stabbing pang of jealousy toward the missing star. Maybe Diana was facing an uncertain future—or worse—but if you were going to be ruined, Dane Forrest was probably the most exciting way to do it.
Suddenly, the band struck up a lively Charleston. Scrambling couples flooded the dance floor. “Come on, Jimmy,” Gabby squealed. “Let’s dance!”
“Sit down, Gabby,” Larry said. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m not! I’m just happy for once. And I want to dance. All of you are always making me dance, and now I want to for a change! I want to dance!”
The waiter was arriving at their table with their steaks. “Maybe you better eat something first, honey,” Jimmy said. “Get something in your stomach before you go too crazy.”
“Aw, don’t be such a wet blanket!” Gabby shouted. “They’re playing the shimmy shake, and I want to dance. I want to shimmy with you, Jimmy. Listen to that, I rhymed! I wanna shimmy with Jimmy,” she chanted in a high-pitched singsong, lunging for Jimmy’s arm. “I wanna shimmy shimmy shimmy with my Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy … everybody sing!” Suddenly, Gabby’s chair gave way. She toppled over onto the waiter with a terrible crash. His tray went flying into the air, depositing steak, champagne, lobster Newburg, and an entire boat of gravy down the front of Gabby’s dress.
“Gabby!” Margo cried, jumping to her feet. “Are you all right?”
Larry grabbed Margo’s wrist. “Get her out of here.”
“I don’t feel so good,” Gabby moaned.
“Margo,” Larry hissed. The pack of photographers, having smelled fresh blood, was beginning to swarm. “Now.”
Margo dragged the protesting Gabby to her feet and beat a hasty retreat through the palm trees, which formed a kind of protective canopy, making it impossible for cameras to get a clear shot until they reached the entrance of the ladies’ powder room. Smart, Margo thought as she heaved Gabby through the door. They must have planned it that way.
Inside the powder room, everything was gold. Gold carpeting, gold wallpaper, gold dressing tables with mirrors in carved gold frames: the whole room glowed as though a pirate had just opened a chest of buried treasure. A gold velvet chaise dominated the center of the room. Languidly draped across it, her shimmering black gown providing the only contrast in the room, was Amanda Farraday.
“Oh!” Her smoky hazel eyes widened in surprise. She held a long ebony cigarette holder straight up in the air, like an exclamation point. “What do we have here?”
Margo racked her brain for a plausible lie. A sudden illness? A belligerent waiter? Hedy Lamarr? That’s it, Margo thought wildly. I’ll blame it on Hedy Lamarr! Hedy Lamarr, in a drunken rage, had flung a tray of lobster Newburg at an unsuspecting Gabby. Margo could see the headlines now: Quelle Surprise! Hedy Lamarr Goes Cocoanuts at the Grove: Exotic European Hurls Homard at Starlet Songbird!
“Oh my God!” The uniformed bathroom attendant leapt out of a marble toilet stall, fluttering her hands in front of her apron. “What happened to—”
Amanda interrupted her smoothly. “Carmen, leave us alone, please.”
The woman’s mouth tightened. “But the little miss,” she cajoled, “her beautiful dress … surely I ought to tell somebody.…”
Amanda plucked a crisp twenty-dollar bill from her black silk glove and brandished it under the astonished woman’s nose. “You see this?” she hissed.
The attendant nodded dazedly. It was probably enough money to pay her rent for a month. “Yes, Miss Farraday.”
“Good.” Amanda ripped the precious bill in half and stuffed one piece into the woman’s shaking hand. “Get lost for the next twenty minutes and the other half of President Jackson here is yours. Under one condition: You keep your mouth shut. If I hear that Perdita Pendleton or any of the rest of those Picture Palace hags got as much as one word out of you, I’ll make sure this is the last piece of lettuce you see in this town that you don’t find in a salad. You understand me?” The woman gave a quick nod as she made her way for the door.
“Now, first things first.” Seizing Gabby’s shoulders, Amanda steered her into a toilet stall. “She’s got to get in there and bring up whatever she’s got in the bread box.”
“You don’t mean …”
“Puke, vomit. Regurgitate. I don’t care what you call it. She’s got to do it.”
“But I want to dance,” Gabby murmured groggily. “I’m a swell dancer. I’ve been having lessons and everything.”
“Sugar, for all I know you’re Eleanor Powell and Ginger Rogers combined, but right now all you’ve got to do is make it come up.” Amanda closed the stall door. A moment later, they heard retching. “Good girl,” Amanda called encouragingly. “That’s the way.”
“Is that really necessary?” Margo asked tremulously.
“Are you kidding?” Amanda giggled. She looked younger up close, Margo noted, still beautiful, but with slightly crooked teeth and a spray of farm-girl freckles peppering her nose. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Margo herself. “She can barely stand. She’s got to sober up, if you want to get her out of here with any kind of dignity intact, and believe me, this is the quickest way.”
“Not that. I meant the whole business with the bathroom attendant.”
Amanda’s smile faded. “You want to see this whole episode in the gossip rags tomorrow? Where do you think they get their information? Bellhops, limo drivers, waiters, doormen, powder room attendants. The big shots don’t even realize they exist, but believe me, they know everything about everyone. The columnists offer them five bucks a tip. Ten, if it’s really juicy.”
“But ratting out the people who keep you employed?” Margo said. “That’s horrible.”
“Is it? If you’re trying to pay rent and carfare and feed and clothe a whole family on a buck fifty a day, do you really care what some reporter writes about a bunch of millionaires? If you want to keep them quiet, you have to make it worth their while. Just ask your friend Larry Julius.” She shook her head. “Twenty clams, though, boy oh boy. That was every penny Zellman gave me for the powder room. Could have kept me in lipstick and stockings for two months.”
“Why did you do it, then?”
“Oh, some kind of Olympus solidarity, I guess. Besides, Larry Julius owes me a favor now, doesn’t he? Around these parts, a girl can’t have too many powerful men in her debt.”
“At any rate, it’s terribly kind of you to help.” Margo retreated into impersonal politeness. She felt uncomfortable with this world Amanda described, with its unethical journalists and paid informants and old men giving young girls exorbitant sums of money to go to the powder room. Maybe it’s true, she thought. Maybe everything my parents said about Hollywood was right. “It all seemed to happen so quickly. We only just got here, after all. I don’t know how she got so drunk so fast.”
Amanda picked up Gabby’s evening bag from the chaise. Undoing the clasp, she pulled out a small vial of pink pills. “Well, wonder no more.”
“Those? That’s nothing,” Margo said defensively. “Just something the doctor gives her to help her with her diet, that’s all.”
“Sure. Her diet. And then she’s so speeded up she can’t sleep. So they give her these.” Amanda pulled out another vial, yellow pills this time. “Nembies.”
“Excuse me?”
“Downers. You mix these with a drink and it’s good night, nurse. That is, unless they do you in altogether.”
Margo swallowed hard. “You mean …”
“I mean, she better be careful. She wouldn’t be the first nice thin girl to quietly drift off one night and never wake up, while the studio tries to figure out a way to cover up the fact that they drugged her to death. They’d get away with it too. They always do.” Diana, Margo thought suddenly. Gabby had talked about Diana’s taking pills for her weight too. Could she be one of those girls?
“The biggest mistake people make is thinking the studio is looking out for them,” Amanda was saying. “It’s all that happy-family crap Leo Karp talks. What a load of bull. The studio looks out for the studio. We’re just products, and products have to make money or they’re discontinued.” Amanda pulled a gold compact encrusted with tiny green gems from her black velvet evening bag and began to repair her lipstick with a tiny brush. “They can drape us in all the diamonds and furs they want. We’re still the working class. All the real power stays at the top, same as it always was.”
Margo laughed nervously. “You sound like a Communist.”
“Do I?” Amanda studied her reflection critically in her mirror, making minute adjustments to her left eyebrow with the tip of her fingernail. “Maybe. The Communists are right about a lot of things. At least, that’s what Harry says.”
“Harry Gordon?” Margo said. “The screenwriter?”
Amanda’s face softened into a dreamy glow. “Oh, you know who he is? He’s awfully good, isn’t he? And so passionate about his work and the world. He’s from New York, from the theater, and he sees right through all that mercenary Hollywood bull.”
“Why is he out here if he hates it so much?”
“He’s got a widowed mother and three unmarried sisters back in Brooklyn to support,” Amanda said simply. “And besides, he had a vision for the pictures. He wants to see if he can make something great.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about him,” Margo said.
“I’m just a fan, that’s all.” Amanda snapped the compact shut. “That’s pretty,” she said suddenly, pointing to Margo’s pin.
Margo’s hand flew up reflexively to cover it. “Thank you.”
“It’s unusual, isn’t it? Obviously not the studio’s. Where did you get it?”
“It’s, uh …” Nervously, Margo twisted the pin in her fingers. It was one of the only things she’d been able to bear taking with her from Pasadena. It was a link to her old self, to things she wasn’t ready to talk about yet with anyone, let alone a virtual stranger. “It was a gift,” she said finally.
Amanda grinned. “Not-so-secret admirer?”
“Oh, no,” Margo said, startled. “Nothing like that.” She swallowed hard. Her parents were about the last thing she wanted to discuss with Amanda Farraday. “It’s sort of an heirloom, I guess.”
“That’s right.” Amanda’s eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to be some kind of heiress or something, aren’t you?”
“I … what?”
“You’re Margo Sterling, right? I read all about you in Picture Palace. They made you sound terribly top-drawer. Where are you from?”
“I … um … I grew up in Pasadena.”
“Well, la-di-da. And how did dear old mum and dad feel about daughter dearest going into the pictures?”
“Well …”
There was a deafening flush as Gabby, looking exhausted, emerged from the stall, wiping her mouth with a sheet of toilet tissue. Margo was grateful for the interruption. Surely Amanda hadn’t meant any harm, but getting this unexpected third degree had unsettled her.
“Feeling better?” Margo asked Gabby.
Gabby nodded, pointing a damp finger. “What’s she doing here?”
“Helping you, you ungrateful little bitch,” Amanda said cheerfully. “Come on, let’s get her out of here.”
With the stains on Gabby’s dress hidden by Amanda’s strategically draped fox-fur stole—“It belongs to the studio anyway,” Amanda said, when Margo protested—they managed to get Gabby back to the table.
“Gabs, there you are!” Jimmy exclaimed, rising to his feet and taking her by the waist in a well-rehearsed move. “I’m feeling a little worse for the wear myself. What say you take me home? All right with you, chief?” He grinned at Larry.
“Sounds good to me.”
Jimmy led Gabby away. Margo turned to Amanda to thank her for her help, but she was already snaking a path through the palm trees to Oscar Zellman’s table. Her glittery black train trailed behind her like the fin of a mermaid’s tail.
“Well, kiddo, I guess it’s just the two of us,” Larry said. “Have a drink.”
“I’m not much of a drinker,” Margo said. “You don’t want two sick girls on your hands in one night.”
“Just a little one. People are watching, you know, and it’ll get that look off your face.”
“What look?”
“Terror.” Larry chuckled. “Abject terror.”
Margo took a small sip of champagne. It had gone warm and flat while she was in the bathroom. Larry reached over to freshen her glass. “So,” he said pleasantly. “I see you made a new friend.”
“She helped me get Gabby cleaned up.” Margo glanced over at Zellman’s table, where Amanda was chatting animatedly, a generous expanse of cleavage spilling from the top of her black dress. Oscar Zellman couldn’t take his eyes off her. Will I ever hold a man’s attention like that? “She paid off the bathroom attendant and everything. To keep her from talking to the press, she said.”
“Really?” Larry looked impressed. “Smart girl. How much?”
“Twenty dollars.”
Larry whistled. “Big spender. I guess I’ll have to put that on my tab.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Let’s dance.”
Margo suddenly felt very tired. “Maybe later.”
“It’s not a request,” Larry said. “You’ve got to be seen.”
The band struck up a lively version of “It Had to Be You” as Larry led her onto the floor, guiding her expertly to a clearing in the palm trees where the cameras could get a good shot. It’s like I’m a new car he wants to show off.
“Smile, duchess,” Larry muttered. “Come on. People are watching.” People are watching. It sounded like something her mother would say. Maybe nothing bad happened to Diana Chesterfield at all, Margo thought suddenly. Maybe she just needed to escape.
The song ended, and the orchestra began to play a slow, romantic number. “How Deep Is the Ocean,” Margo thought. The Irving Berlin ballad had always been one of her favorite songs. The last time she danced to it was with Phipps McKendrick at the infamous Christmas dance. She’d worn a blue dress then too, she remembered, with the corsage of tiny pink roses she’d saved afterward. She wondered if it was still drying to dust in Pasadena in her top dresser drawer. Phipps had looked awfully handsome that night, with that soft lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead when he’d bent to pin the roses on her dress. It seemed like a lifetime ago.…
“Larry Julius,” said a familiar male voice. “Aren’t you the luckiest man in the room.”
Startled, Margo spun around and found herself directly in front of Dane Forrest, looking devastatingly handsome in his dinner jacket and tie. She felt her stomach make a peculiar leap, as though it had suddenly decided to throw itself off the edge of a cliff.
“Dane.” Larry scowled. “I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”
“I didn’t expect to be here. In fact, I was about to settle in with a good book and a glass of warm milk when I had the sudden and irresistible urge to dance with a beautiful girl. So I put on this monkey suit and came down here, and lo and behold, I see you’ve got the most beautiful one of the bunch all warmed up for me.”
“Kiddo, I believe you’ve met Mr. Forrest,” Larry said grudgingly.
“Oh, I’ve met the ravishing Miss Sterling. Although she was calling herself something different then. Lady Olivia, I think it was?” Gazing into Margo’s eyes, he gave her a long, slow smile. Margo’s head was spinning. Oh God, she thought. What if I really am going to be sick? “So what do you say?” Dane continued. “Mind if I cut in?”
Larry looked concerned. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
“Oh, come on, Julius. You can’t possibly keep her to yourself all night. They’ll be scraping the remains of the brokenhearted men off the Hollywood sign come morning.”
Larry’s eyes darted toward the cadre of reporters hovering at the edge of the dance floor, notebooks and cameras poised to commit to press even the slightest hint of tension between publicist and star. “All right. One dance. One.”
“In that case, Margo, we better hurry.” Dane smirked. “Or it’ll be over before it’s even begun.”
Trembling, Margo moved wordlessly into Dane’s arms. It was overwhelming to be so close to him again. She took a few deep breaths, feeling the weight of his warm hand on her back, inhaling the clean, musky scent of him from the collar of his jacket.
“Sterling,” Dane said. “Not bad.”
“I … Excuse me?”
“The last name. Certainly better than Funkhauser or Furgenbluger or whatever you started out with. And Margo. Very French, very marquee-ready. I wonder what genius came up with that.”
Margo laughed. “As a matter of fact, my housekeeper used to call me that when I was a little girl.”
“Housekeeper.” Dane snorted. “That’s right. Picture Palace made you sound pretty top-of-the-heap.”
If he read that story in Picture Palace, then he must have seen the one about Diana being declared officially missing, Margo thought suddenly. But somehow, this didn’t seem like the time or place to bring that up. “That story may have been a bit exaggerated.”
“They usually are.” Dane chuckled. “My studio biography says I’m descended from a line of pirate kings and I tamed my first wild Arabian stallion at the age of seven. But of course, that’s all true, so maybe I’m not the best example. Anyway, it was a nice feature,” he continued. “Nice picture too. Pity it had to be overshadowed by Diana. But then, she’s always been good at that. Overshadowing people.”
Margo drew her breath in sharply. It was a shock, hearing Dane speak Diana’s name. Of course, she thought, this must be horrible for him, unless … Dane’s face was perfectly neutral, but there was something dark and unreadable in his eyes.
“Now, never mind that,” Dane said. “I want to hear all about you. How are you getting along?”
“Oh, fine, I guess …”
“Well, it’s all terribly exciting, naturally,” Margo said. “I mean, sometimes I wake up in the morning and just have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.”
“You don’t have to give the studio-approved speech to me,” Dane said. “I don’t have a notepad at the ready.”
Margo blushed. “Do you really want to know?”
“Sure. After your screen test, well … I’ve been thinking about you.” Dane looked almost shy. “I guess I feel a little responsible, that’s all. For getting you into this mess.”
“Well, in that case …” He’s been thinking about me! The very idea made Margo want to sing. “I guess it’s not exactly what I expected. So far, it just seems like a lot of self-improvement.”
“ ‘A penny saved is a penny earned’ and all that jazz? Or have they started bringing out the analysts?” He spoke in a fake German accent. “Vell, Miss Sterling, tell me about your saddest memories and zen I vill tell you how it vill help you cry on cue.”
“Oh, no.” Margo shook her head. “We haven’t even discussed any acting yet. Mostly, we talk about my hair. Center part or side part? Should the curl go on the right side or the left? And then, when the subject of hair has been exhausted, we talk about eyebrows. How thin, how high, how arched? And don’t even get me started on lips. The lips are an ongoing debate. Red or pink? Full or thin? Cupid’s-bow or straight across?”
“Lips are terribly important,” Dane said.
“Oh, I don’t doubt it. But over the past four days I’ve gone from Clara Bow to Joan Crawford to looking like someone socked me in the mouth, and I still don’t think the question has been resolved to anyone’s satisfaction.”
“Well, they look all right to me.” His face was suddenly very close to hers. Dear God, Margo thought, her stomach churning with a mixture of joy and terror, is he going to kiss me? “And are you making friends?”
It was the last thing she expected him to ask her. “Making friends?”
Dane smiled sadly. “It can be pretty lonely on the lot if you don’t have someone you can trust.”
He’s trying to tell me something, Margo realized. What? “Well, Gabby Preston has been very nice. Larry Julius’s office sent over a big bunch of flowers when I first arrived. And there are so many people in and out all the time, and there’s so much to do, the photo shoots and the wardrobe fittings and the movement lessons and etiquette lessons …” Margo wrinkled her nose, remembering the funny little man who had tried very hard to convince her that she was holding her soup spoon incorrectly, having had no idea of what a rigorous bastion of proper cutlery handling the Frobisher dining table had been. “I’m hardly ever alone.”
“I asked if you were lonely.” Dane’s arms tightened around her, pulling her close. “That’s different from being alone.” Her cheek fell against his chest. To her startled delight, she realized his heart was beating almost as quickly as hers. For the first time in a long time, Margo felt safe. So safe and wonderful and warm that she didn’t notice anything else.
Not Amanda Farraday’s piercing stare. Not Larry Julius’s furious expression as he came storming across the floor.
And certainly not the blinding glare of flashbulbs that popped everywhere around them.