Starstruck - Love Me Part 1

Love me.

Rachel Shukert.

ONE.

Movie people were used to being up at the crack of dawn.

The lucky ones-that is, the ones who actually had jobs-were already hard at work at the studios by the time the dazzling California sun came up over the scrubby, green-dotted rock of the Hollywood hills: dressing sets, calibrating lights, tapping out rewrites, stumbling into the makeup department to have their imperfect, human faces carefully a.s.sessed, erased, and replaced before the daylight could expose anything the dream factories would rather keep hidden. The unlucky, unemployed majority had seen out the long night and their last dollar in the twinkling row of restaurants and ballrooms lining the Sunset Strip, dining and dancing and drinking away the choking fear that the long-awaited lucky break would never come.

And then there were the others, somewhere in the middle. Not quite successful but not quite ready to give up, not quite famous but not quite unknown.

They were the ones who were trapped. Caught in a web of work and worry-not to mention the pills, which made the work possible-through which sleep could never quite find its way. Winding up in Hollywood purgatory, a kind of eternal soph.o.m.ore slump: that was the greatest fear of everyone in the business.

And it was exactly where Gabby Preston found herself now.

Or maybe more accurately, again.

It was four-thirty in the morning, but Gabby was still wide-awake. She paced the floor of her bedroom in the house on Fountain Avenue in a well-practiced path, placing one slippered foot in front of the other all the way down the frayed edge of the rose-colored Oriental carpet to the dressing table, where she'd pause to yank up her pajama top in front of the mirror, checking to see if her exposed stomach looked any flatter than it had a minute ago. A quick rearranging of the perfume bottles and lipstick stubs, then over to peer inside the door of her wardrobe, as though some new and exciting purchase might have magically materialized among the collared blouses and sensible skirts hanging in neat rows from the matching hangers.

Next came a desultory shuffle through the alb.u.ms resting in an untidy stack on the polished cherrywood surface of the RCA all-in-one wireless/record player. It was quite a luxury to have one of those babies all to yourself, but as Gabby's mother, Viola, had told the keepers of the Olympus purse strings, given the amount of music the studio expected Gabby to learn every week, it was a necessary one.

Finally, she'd flop back on her quilted satin bedspread, where she'd take a few deep, hopeful breaths before the thrum of her racing heart told her it was no use and the whole pattern began again.

How long had it been since she'd slept? Really properly slept, with dreams and everything, and without needing blue pills to make her eyes close and green ones to open them up again? A couple of months at least. Maybe-probably, if she was being very, very honest-even longer. And the blue pills were barely working anymore. She had gobbled four of them before bedtime last night-her last four-and gotten no more than half an hour's light nap, tops. It would be hours before the pharmacies opened and she could send Viola out for more.

Gabby picked up the empty gla.s.s pill bottle off the dressing table and held it up to the light. A fine residue of blue powder coated the base. She couldn't stick her finger all the way to the bottom to reach it, let alone her tongue, but if she filled it halfway with water and let it dissolve, she could drink it.

Maybe that would be just enough to push her over the edge into a few precious hours of sleep.

Of course, the powder would be a whole lot more effective accompanied by a nice big glug of gin, but Viola had put the liquor cabinet under lock and key. Ironic, Gabby thought, considering it's my five-hundred-dollar-a-week salary that's paying for it all, right down to the padlock. How would Viola feel if Gabby started rationing the food in the icebox?

Or better yet, if I slapped my own padlock on the door of her closet? Ever since Gabby's mother had gotten a load of the bounty in the trunks Amanda Farraday had moved into the spare room-the delicately jet-beaded evening gowns, the close-fitting Paris suits with the raw-silk linings and hand-st.i.tched seams so tiny and neat you practically needed a microscope to see them-the packages had been arriving from the most exclusive department stores in Beverly Hills. Smart striped hatboxes and stacks of shoe boxes and tissue-paper parcels yielding piles of complicated underthings in slippery French silk. Gabby couldn't bear to imagine what the h.e.l.l her mother-who at forty-five was positively ancient-thought she was doing with that kind of stuff. She liked even less to think about how much it was costing.

It'll all be different as soon as I turn eighteen, Gabby told herself. Then she'd have control of her money, and her life, and Viola would find herself on a budget so fast it would make her curly little head spin. That is, if I don't tell her to take a hike altogether.

It wouldn't be much longer now. Two years, maybe less, if she could figure out some way to dig up her original birth certificate. Viola had always been a little vague when it came to birthdays, ever since the vaudeville days, when the Fabulous Preston Sisters were known for conveniently being whatever ages the theater bookers and press agents thought would sell the most tickets. According to her official Olympus Studios publicity bio, Gabby Preston, singing starlet of stage and screen, had turned sweet sixteen on Christmas Day, the only birthday Viola had ever let Gabby or her older sister, Frankie, celebrate, since "if it's good enough for the Baby Jesus, it's good enough for the Preston girls" and the double billing saved on presents in the lean years besides. In reality, Ethel Ellen O'Halloran, as Gabby had been named at birth, had to be at least a year older. Maybe even eighteen already.

Still, she couldn't do much without the papers to prove it, and Viola had probably thrown those in the fire years ago. There wasn't much Gabby's mother wouldn't do if it meant an extra year with her hot little hand in Gabby's pocket.

Margo Sterling would never have this problem, Gabby thought.

True, Margo didn't talk about her parents much-or at all. But Gabby was a close enough friend to know that the incandescent blonde all of Hollywood-h.e.l.l, all of America-had anointed its latest big-screen queen had grown up with pretty much everything a girl could ask for: a big, beautiful house in Pasadena, a top-notch education at some fancy-schmancy girls' school, a place in Society (the capital S signifying the kind of rich people who would never willingly admit s...o...b..z types into their rarified midst). And that was all before she'd seemingly done nothing but shrug her slim shoulders and step straight into the coveted role vacated by Diana Chesterfield in the box-office smash The Nine Days' Queen.

Honestly, Gabby thought, it's like she just said "Oh, all right, I guess I'll be a movie star today."

Margo's romantic life had seemed similarly effortless. She had broken the heart of Jimmy Molloy, Olympus's biggest star and the man Gabby had desperately wanted for herself-or at least, everyone thought she had, which was the important thing. Now Margo was practically living with Dane Forrest, who was just about the handsomest actor on the planet. Her picture had been on the cover of every magazine in the country. And this morning, by the time her maid had delicately sliced off the top of her soft-boiled egg, Margo was probably going to have an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Talk about a charmed life.

It wasn't that Gabby was jealous of Margo, exactly. It was just so unfair that it had all been so easy for her. Worst of all, n.o.body else seemed to mind. You'd think the anxious strivers and cla.s.s-conscious immigrants who ran Hollywood would resent the ent.i.tled nonchalance with which the newest star in the Olympus Studios constellation seemed to grab every available column inch, but no, they just lapped it up as if they were kittens at a saucer full of cream.

That's the trouble with arrivistes, Gabby thought. They always have way too much awe for those who never needed to arrive.

This was supposed to have been Gabby's year. Last spring she'd been all set to headline in An American Girl, the picture Harry Gordon was going to write for her. It was supposed to have been the big one, the role of a lifetime, the picture that would finally make her a big star. She was the one whose phone was supposed to ring at sunrise this morning with a call from Larry Julius in the Olympus press office. She was the one who was supposed to have a truck pull up outside with one of the six-foot-tall foil-wrapped Oscars Mr. Karp, the head of the studio, was said to have specially commissioned from his personal chocolatier in Beverly Hills for every Olympus nominee. She was supposed to have stacks of congratulatory telegrams from the likes of Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy and Claudette Colbert, and weeks' worth of consultations with Rex Mandalay, the famously tempestuous (and tight-panted) Australian who was Olympus's most revered costumer, about the gorgeous gown he would design just for her.

But none of that was going to happen now. Those dreams had died that horrible night when Harry Gordon had told her he was taking the part-her part-in An American Girl away from her. It was a wound that hadn't quite healed, and Margo's inevitable nomination would only pour salt in it.

There's always next year, Viola would say. Everybody would say it. But Gabby had been in Hollywood long enough to know that the more people said those things, the less they believed them.

And besides, they weren't even making the picture now. An American Girl might have been the role of a lifetime, but it was dead as a doornail as far as production was concerned. That was some small consolation. If Gabby couldn't play that part, at least n.o.body else would.

"Gabrielle."

The low whisper came through the keyhole. This was Viola's latest affectation, conveniently forgetting that "Gabby" wasn't short for anything, that it wasn't even a real name. "Gabrielle, are you awake?"

The door swung open before Gabby had time to decide what her answer would be. Her mother stood framed in the doorway, her stout body wrapped tightly in a lavender chenille dressing gown, her newly hennaed hair protected by a large square of white silk pinned over the tight marcelle waves. For years, Viola had had plain brown hair, just like Gabby's. Then the hairdressers at the studio had started putting a chestnut rinse in Gabby's curls and suddenly, Viola had decided she needed a reddish tint too.

"I saw your light on," she said, pus.h.i.+ng one of the pins at the edge of the silk back into place. "Don't tell me you've been up all night again."

"What does it matter if I'm asleep? I'm resting, aren't I?"

Sighing, Viola sat down on Gabby's neatly made bed, making a face as she ran her hand over the pale satin of the bedspread. She had spent what seemed like hours in the linens department of Bullocks trying to talk Gabby into buying what she termed a more "age-appropriate" cotton coverlet printed with pink and yellow strawberry blossoms, but Gabby had refused to budge. Now Viola hated the bedspread for the same reason her daughter adored it: it represented one of the only arguments Viola O'Halloran Preston had ever lost. "You need sleep. Why didn't you take a pill?"

"I did. They're all gone."

"All of them? There were six left in the bottle when we finished dinner last night."

Six? "No. There couldn't have been that many."

"Gabby, I counted them myself."

The last time Viola decided Gabby was taking too many pills, she'd ripped up her prescription, and Gabby had spent the whole week feeling as if bugs were crawling under her skin, eating her from the inside out, until Dr. Lipkin, the studio doctor, had saved the day. Think of something, Gabby thought desperately. Anything. "Amanda must have taken them."

"Amanda?"

"I know she's been having trouble sleeping lately," said Gabby as sincerely as she could. Delivery was important with Viola; she had been blessed with what she liked to think of as a peerless nose for bull. Lucky I'm such a good actress, Gabby told herself.

"That girl," Viola groaned. "That girl is becoming a problem." A dangerous rasp had crept into her throat.

"It's not Amanda's fault." This was the trouble with telling even one lie to someone like Viola. You always had to tell so many more. "I said it was okay. She wouldn't have taken them otherwise. It's just a misunderstanding."

"Gabrielle, those pills aren't jelly beans. You can't just hand them out to be friendly. They're your medication. What Dr. Lipkin and the studio have decided you need to take to be able to work."

"But Amanda-"

"Amanda's career isn't my concern," Viola interrupted. "Frankly, I don't care about her one way or another."

That's not how it used to be, Gabby thought bitterly. When Amanda Farraday first started hanging around the house on Fountain Avenue, looking for a hot meal and a shoulder to cry on in the wake of her breakup with the red-hot screenwriter Harry Gordon, Viola had seemed quite swept off her feet. Gabby had watched with a mixture of bemus.e.m.e.nt and jealousy as her normally curt mother stayed up late into the night sitting at the kitchen table with the glamorous redhead, drinking hot tea with whiskey while poring over the latest issues of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and tearfully commiserating over the awfulness of men.

Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when Amanda started complaining about the hotel she'd been staying at since Harry left, Viola, in a fit of sudden holiday spirit, had invited her to stay in the spare room for as long as she liked.

She hadn't even bothered to ask Gabby first, although it wasn't like Gabby could object, since Amanda's broken heart was just the teensiest bit her fault. Gabby had gotten so mad when Harry Gordon told her he was thinking about getting the starring role in An American Girl rea.s.signed to his girlfriend that Gabby had accidentally-on-purpose-but-mostly-on-purpose just happened to tell him Hollywood's best-kept secret: that the ravis.h.i.+ng Amanda had once worked for the notorious Olive Moore, the self-styled "concierge" of Hollywood's most infamously lavish house of ill-repute. Oops.

Harry Gordon had reacted just like Gabby thought he would. For all his radical-socialist utopian bl.u.s.ter, he was a pretty traditional guy at heart, already a little worried about just how he was going to present a bombsh.e.l.l like Amanda to his little Jewish mamaleh back in Bensonhurst. The news that until fairly recently, the property of which he considered himself the sole occupant had been widely available for rent hit him like the proverbial ton of bricks. It was all he could do not to hit Amanda with a literal one.

Their relations.h.i.+p had been doomed from the start. Anyone with half a brain could see that. Still, Gabby had been startled by the volcanic force of Amanda's grief.

"You'd think a girl like Amanda Farraday would have a whole army of understudies waiting to step into the newly vacant leading-man role," Jimmy Molloy had said, after what was supposed to have been a fun group outing to the movies ended abruptly with Amanda crying her way into a full-fledged asthma attack when she caught a whiff of a man in line for the theater wearing the same aftershave as Harry. "But whaddya know? Turns out she really loves the guy."

The whole thing made Gabby feel uncomfortably-not to mention uncharacteristically-guilty. Not to the point where she'd actually considered fessing up, because what good was that going to do anyone? But letting Amanda, aka the world's s.e.xiest watering can-who, Gabby was pleased to note, was covered head to toe in a coating of very imperfect freckles when she didn't bother to dress or put her face on, which these days was frankly most of the time-hide away in her spare room and help herself to the remnants of the icebox seemed like the least Gabby could do.

Besides, the truth was Gabby kind of liked having Amanda around. It was nice to have another girl in the house, no matter how mopey she was. Someone to talk to, to make little jokes with, to deflect some of Viola's suffocating attention. It was almost like when her sister, Frankie, had been around, before she'd gotten so sick and tired of the Fabulous Preston Sisters and their not-so-fabulous vaudeville gypsy life that she'd run off with Martini the Magnificent, the magician who opened for them on their double bill, and left Gabby all alone.

Figures, Gabby thought, taking note of the malevolent sparkle, hard and all too familiar, that had come into her mother's eye at the mention of Amanda's name. Just when I get used to having Amanda around, Viola's going to run her off. So long, Amanda Farraday. Nice knowing you.

"Aren't you listening to the broadcast?" Viola dropped Gabby's hands abruptly. The Viola Preston Nurturing Mother Variety Hour was over for another day.

"What broadcast?"

"Gabrielle, please. You know exactly which one."

"It's not on for another hour at least."

"Still, I don't know why we bought you that expensive radio if you're never going to bother using it."

"You mean the radio I bought," Gabby said hotly. "And I do use it. Just not in the middle of the night. It's called having consideration for other people. You should try it sometime."

Viola shrugged, but there was a crafty gleam in her eye. "It's not because of that Sterling girl, is it? Because honestly, Gabby, you're going to have to get over that. It only makes you look small. Margo Sterling is going to be nominated for the Oscar this morning, and when the newspapers call, you're going to tell every one of them how thrilled you are for her. After all, the two of you are the best of friends, and there's no reason why you shouldn't be. It wasn't Margo who stole your part in An American Girl, was it?"

Gabby felt her jaw clench. Viola always knew how to land a punch.

"No," her mother continued, answering her own question, "that fast little piece is right here, sleeping under your very own roof."

"And you invited her."

"G.o.d knows what I was thinking." Viola sighed. "I've got too big a heart, I guess. Never could refuse shelter to a stray, that's me."

"Right. You're a regular Christian martyr."

"But there's no telling what she'll have up that Paris-cut sleeve of hers next," Viola continued. "I just think it's an unnecessary risk. Why keep her around, soaking up the spotlight?"

Gabby felt an angry flush spring to her cheeks. "You think I can't hold my own next to Amanda?"

"I know the cheapest rhinestone sparkles more than the rarest pearl," Viola said calmly. "It's only once you've taken it home that you realize it's worthless. I'm simply thinking of what's best for you. You're the real talent, Gabby. I just want to make sure you get your chance to s.h.i.+ne."

Viola's eyes were s.h.i.+ning now, bright with unshed tears, and not for the first time Gabby thought her mother was the one who should have been the actress. Deep down, I'm pretty sure she thinks the same thing. "Me too."

Smiling beatifically, Viola fixed her moist gaze on the clear gla.s.s vial of green pills on Gabby's vanity. "I don't suppose you're going back to sleep, are you?"

Gabby snorted. "I don't suppose so."

"Where's that Eddie Sharp record? The one the studio sent over?"

Shrugging, Gabby pointed toward the stack of records on the polished lid of the cherrywood radio. Viola rummaged through them until she found the one she was looking for, buried near the bottom.

"Gabby!" she exclaimed, holding up the brown paper sleeve accusingly. "It's still sealed! You haven't even opened it."

"So what?"

"So what?" Viola's eyes blazed. "You think Olympus puts any old bandleader under contract? They know what they're doing. Eddie Sharp is going to be the next big thing. Bigger than Glenn Miller. Bigger than Benny Goodman."

"So what?"

"Say 'so what' again, Gabrielle, and I'm going to knock you one, I swear it," Viola hissed. "You may think you're too high and mighty to care about him, but believe you me, Leo Karp cares. And if Leo Karp asks you to sing at the Governor's Ball, whether it's with the New York Philharmonic or some jug band they dug up out of the swamp, you better care about that too."

The Governor's Ball. It was the most glittering evening of the Hollywood social calendar, an invitation even more coveted than one to the awards ceremony itself. Gabby had imagined making her grand entrance in the Crystal Ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel with a golden statuette gleaming in her hand. Instead, she was going to be crouched in the darkness in some hastily arranged backstage holding area, waiting to be shoved in front of the glamorous crowd to perform like a trained monkey. "He just asked me to sing a couple of songs," Gabby said. "It's no big deal. It's not like it's an audition."

Viola gave a short bark of a laugh. "Oh, but, my dear, that's exactly what it is. That room is going to be filled with every important person in Hollywood. Powerful people. People who could give you everything you've ever dreamed of, or take it all away for good." She seized a silver letter opener from the leather blotter on Gabby's unused secretary desk and shoved it roughly into her daughter's hand. "Open that record and get to work. You're rehearsing with him tomorrow, and you'd better know the music."

"But I want to get some sleep," Gabby said. "I'm tired."

"Oh, darling." Viola flashed her most charming smile. "So what?"

TWO.

"And the Oscar goes to ..."

On the rose-covered stage of the cavernous ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel, Spencer Tracy stood in an immaculately cut tuxedo, flas.h.i.+ng a mischievous grin at the audience as he broke open the fateful missive's golden seal. He read the name inside, gave a knowing little shake of his head, and took a deep breath before he lifted his famous, grinning face back to the camera.

"Margo Sterling, for The Nine Days' Queen."

The scream of joy bursting from Margo's throat was almost completely drowned out by a deafening sea of applause. All around her, friends and colleagues were leaping to their feet, their faces jubilant. Leo Karp, the powerful chief of Olympus Studios. Larry Julius, the head of the omniscient press department and the man who'd discovered her. Raoul Kurtzman, her beloved director, and Harry Gordon, the brilliant screenwriter, cheering proudly as they held their own statuettes aloft. Jimmy Molloy, Olympus's biggest box-office star (and its smallest in stature), standing on his chair, whistling with two fingers in his mouth. Her friends and rivals, Gabby Preston and Amanda Farraday, looking simultaneously thrilled and like they'd been sucking on lemons.

And in the middle of everyone, as clear as though they had a spotlight s.h.i.+ning on them, Lowell and Helen Frobisher, Margo's parents. She hadn't seen them since they'd angrily disowned her when she'd forsaken stuffy Pasadena society for a chance at Hollywood stardom. No daughter of theirs was going to be anything so disreputable as an actress, they had declared, and if she was going to be one, then she wasn't going to be their daughter anymore; it was as simple and as terrible as that.

But here they were, their cheeks wet, their arms outstretched. Cheering her as loudly as anyone, as though they couldn't be prouder of her, as though this had been their dream all along.

Margo felt tears course down her own face as she rose to her feet. Slowly, she made her way to the podium, where the beaming Mr. Tracy held the Oscar out to her. ...