Starstruck - Love Me Part 11

But which one was it? She couldn't very well go barging into every studio. Interrupting the wrong recording session could cost Olympus hundreds of dollars, dollars that would be deducted from her paycheck, if the conductor was surly enough to tell someone about it. And then she could kiss any semblance of a life goodbye for the next hundred years. Maybe two.

There was a little stone bench nestled against Mr. Karp's trellis wall. Mostly hidden from the street, it provided a good view of the side entrances of the recording studios. I'll just sit right there, Gabby thought, and wait. If anyone asks me what I'm doing, I'll just say I was looking for a quiet place to learn some lyrics or something.

The sun was hot, and the sweet, waxy smell of oranges drifting from the little grove in front of the commissary was strong and soothing. It had been days since Gabby had slept of her own accord, but suddenly, her eyelids began to droop. She saw Eddie's face looming before her, his eyes sparkling, felt the warmth of his breath as his beautiful lips came slowly toward hers. In the distance, an odd sc.r.a.ping sound, faint at first, grew louder and louder.

Funny, she thought, that was how it sounded when the old vaudeville guys used to do the soft shoe. But there was no vaudeville anymore. It had to be something else: the papery scratch of a nail file, Viola's old willow broom sweeping the dust from the front porch, a scared little ghost crab scuttling across sand ...

"Gabby?"

Groggily, she opened her eyes, blinking against the bright light. Silhouetted against the sky, blocking out half the sun like a partial eclipse, was the blurry face of Dexter Harrington, a thin stream of cigarette smoke curling from his amused mouth.

"Dammit," Gabby said, "why does everyone think I'm so G.o.dd.a.m.n funny?"

Dexter laughed out loud. "Are you always so cheerful in the mornings?"

She coughed in reply, pointing at his cigarette.

He took another drag. "What are you doing here?"

"Learning my lines." She scowled at him.

"You looked asleep to me."

"Haven't you ever heard of hypnosis?" she asked crossly. "It's supposed to help with the memorization process. Ask anyone."

"Don't you worry that if you sit here long enough, old Mr. Karp is going to look out that fancy window of his and wonder what he's paying you for?"

"Funny," Gabby said coolly, "I could ask you the same thing."

"Me?" Dexter dropped his cigarette b.u.t.t on the ground and stubbed it out with the tip of his shoe. "I'm hard at work laying down a track."

"Oh?" Gabby arranged her features in a convincing look of surprise. "What are you recording?"

"It's supposed to be some background jazz for a movie, but things have gotten a little off track. You know Eddie."

I don't, but I want to. "Mind if I tag along?"

"Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in." Eddie stopped yelling at his horn section long enough to rake his eyes over Gabby. "What's shakin', toots?"

In a polo s.h.i.+rt with the sleeves rolled up over his muscular arms and a porkpie hat pulled low over his eyes, which only served to call extra attention to his incredible mouth, Eddie looked like about the hottest guy Gabby had ever seen. Even if she hadn't been struggling to swallow the handful of green wake-up pills she'd surrept.i.tiously fished out of her pocket and jammed into her mouth as she followed Dexter into the building-it wouldn't do to be sleepy in front of Eddie-Gabby would have been tongue-tied at the sight of him.

To her relief, Dexter answered. "I found her catching forty winks on the bench outside."

"Lazy b.u.m." Eddie grinned. "What say we put you to work before you get picked up for vagrancy?"

The pills had dissolved in the back of her throat, but still Gabby could barely speak. "What ... what do you mean?"

"I want a female vocal on this track we're laying down. 'Little Girl Blue.' Rodgers and Hart. I'm trying to fill in with clarinet, but it just doesn't work structurally without the sung melody for reference. Once through, and one pickup at the bridge. You know the song?"

"Sure. Oh, and speaking of cats ..."

"Yeah, yeah. Later. So, we'll do it in A-flat, over the playback. That should be fine for you, no?"

"Wait!" Gabby cried. This was all happening so fast. Not so much as a how-do-you-do and he was already putting her to work. What should she do? More importantly, what would Amanda do? Play hard to get. Keep your head. Don't give him something he wants until he gives you something you want. "Wait just a second. You don't expect me to just sing for you for free, do you?"

Eddie's mouth twitched. "I was thinking of it more as a favor between friends."

Oh G.o.d, is he mad? I made him mad! Quickly, she tried to cover with a joke. "Sure, friends is great," she said in her best impression of one of the Dead End kids, miming as though she had a cigar clenched between her teeth. "Friends ain't gonna keep me off the streets and out of the joint, you know what I mean?"

Eddie laughed. "All right, kid, whaddya want from me?"

What did Gabby want? The answer flew into her head, clear as crystal. I want to be alone someplace with Eddie. "Well," she said shyly, "remember how the other night you told me you'd take me out sometime to hear some real music? 'Not all this treacly studio c.r.a.p,' you said. Real jazz."

"And that's what you want?"

"That's what I want."

Eddie looked thoughtful. Pensive, even. It was a word she'd heard Margo use, and she liked the sound of it. "All right. It's a date."

"Really?" Gabby's squeal probably didn't fall under the banner of hard to get, but she couldn't help it. "Tonight?"

"When else? Meet me in the studio commissary at eight. I'll take you someplace that'll knock the socks right off your feet. Now get your cute little caboose in front of that microphone and make me a happy man."

Beaming ear to ear, Gabby did as she was told. Who cared about leers on the faces of some of the men, or the flicker of hangdog disapproval on Dexter's? They could whisper and stare all they wanted. It didn't make any difference to her. She was going on a date, a real date, with Eddie Sharp! He'd said so right in front of everybody! It was too, too wonderful for words.

But it was only when Eddie was in the booth and she had the headphones on that she realized how wonderful it was.

"Oh, and Gabby, one more thing," he murmured, in a low, s.e.xy voice he knew only she could hear. "Make sure you don't bring your mother."

It was then, and absolutely then, staring through the gla.s.s of the recording booth into his dark, twinkling eyes, that Gabby was surer of one thing than she'd ever been about anything in her entire life. She didn't care what it took. She didn't care how it happened.

Gabby Preston was going to lose her virginity to Eddie Sharp.

And as far as she was concerned, it couldn't happen soon enough.

THIRTEEN.

"Children!"

Leo Karp clapped his small, square hands together in delight as Margo and Dane were ushered into his office. His palms gave off a thick, dull echo, like the sound of a baseball landing hard against the pocket of a leather mitt. "I couldn't be happier to see you both. Dane, my boy," he said, playfully cuffing the crook of the younger man's arm. It was about the only part of him the famously diminutive Mr. Karp could easily reach. "I don't think I have to tell you how proud we are of you. And, Margo, my dear." He took her hand in both of his and raised it to his lips theatrically. "You look absolutely radiant. Keeping your weight under control, I'm glad to see. I wish more of our girls had your kind of discipline."

Margo blushed furiously, running her gloved hands down the skirt of her silk flowered dress. That's Leo Karp, all right, she thought. You can't gain or lose an ounce in this place without him hearing about it, and he wants to make sure you know it.

"Good to see you too, Leo," Dane said firmly, settling himself into one of the white leather chairs. Since when does he call Mr. Karp by his first name?

If Mr. Karp was taken aback by this sudden informality, he didn't show it. "And for you to come-both of you-to see me just like this, on such short notice, with your busy schedules, well ..." He beamed. "It just warms my heart."

For the first time since Larry Julius had materialized on the doorstep, Margo felt a stab of real terror. Thankfully, her mandatory summonses to Leo Karp's pristine, all-white office fortress had been seldom, but in her limited experience, the more extravagantly and lovingly the studio chief humbled himself before you, the more impossible and painful his demands were about to be. The day he'd commanded her, on pain of firing and subsequent homelessness, to give up any thought of Dane and to embark upon a completely fake public relations.h.i.+p with Jimmy Molloy (who frankly couldn't have been less interested in women in general and Margo in particular), he'd practically driven himself to tears begging her to think of him as her own father.

Dane produced a cigarette from his engraved gold case and lit it with painstaking slowness. It was a well-known fact that Leo Karp hated cigarette smoking. Normally, the only person who got away with it in his presence was Larry Julius, who, sure enough, was already puffing away from his usual chair beneath the enormous white lacquer cage that housed Nelson and Cleopatra, Mr. Karp's pair of matched white c.o.c.katoos.

It's a power play, Margo thought suddenly. He's trying to show Mr. Karp that he's not scared of him.

"I'm sure it's our pleasure, Leo," Dane said with studied calmness, exhaling lavish curlicues of smoke through his mouth and nose. "Now, are you going to tell us what this is all about, or do you not want to spoil the suspense?"

"Suspense? Who do I look like, Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k? I just wanted to have a chat with my two favorite stars, that's all. Shouldn't a proud papa get to have a nice visit with his children?" Mr. Karp was still beaming, his tone terrifyingly light. "After all, so much has happened since I've last seen you. Diana Chesterfield, for instance. You must be so relieved to see she's back safe and sound."

Here it comes, Margo thought, feeling the color drain from her face. He's going to tell Dane he has to go back with Diana and we're all through.

She felt a sudden urge to fling her body over Dane's, as though she were a bodyguard throwing herself in front of an oncoming bullet. Yet a glance at Dane, suddenly gone as still and inexpressive as a wax figure, told her that such a dramatic gesture would be unwelcome. Apparently, stiff upper lips were the order of the day.

Margo straightened her spine, trying to coax her body into the regally fatalistic posture she had a.s.sumed when she approached the execution block in the final scene of The Nine Days' Queen. What was it Raoul Kurtzman had whispered in his tortuous English into her ear before the cameras rolled? Cutting off your head, you can't stop them. But you can stop them from the satisfaction of seeing you afraid.

"Of course," Dane said quietly. "It's a great relief."

"And such a surprise!" Mr. Karp crowed. "If I hadn't known about it already, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I would have dropped dead of a heart attack right there."

"Diana's always known how to make an entrance."

"That she has." Mr. Karp smiled benevolently. "Now, Dane, I want you to know, I appreciate what she's put you through."

"What she's-"

"She's quite contrite, believe me, and eager to befriend you both. I told her to give it time. But I hope you'll soon be able to forgive her." He looked at them both with pleading eyes. "For the sake of the Olympus family. A father wants all his children to get along."

Who, exactly, Margo wondered, is this performance for? Surely Mr. Karp was aware that everyone in the room knew that the story Diana had parroted to the magazines was a total fiction, concocted by none other than Larry Julius himself. Surely he knew, and knew that they knew, where Diana had been all along, that until recently the role she'd been playing had not been so much "prisoner of love" as "inmate at the asylum."

And while he might not exactly have known the extent of the bargain with the devil Dane and Diana had made in their joint thirst for stardom-Dane was sure that n.o.body, not even Larry Julius, knew that-he must have suspected that behind closed doors, their relations.h.i.+p may not have been quite what it seemed.

Yet once an official studio version of a story had come over the wires, you could put Mr. Karp to the rack and he would never admit it was anything less than absolutely, one hundred percent true. n.o.body had any choice but to play along with the script he had provided. Not for the first time, Margo wondered whether of all the great actors who had pa.s.sed through Olympus's gates, Leo F. Karp wasn't the greatest of them all.

"Still, just to make sure we don't have any"-Mr. Karp paused to think of a suitably neutral, and therefore meaningless, phrase-"any unnecessary misunderstandings, I've put her straight back to work on the new Raoul Kurtzman picture. Madame Bovary, written by some French fellow. It's a closed set, and as you know, Kurtzman's a real taskmaster when he wants to be. You're not likely to see her in the commissary or out on the town for a while. When it makes sense to get the three of you together, Mr. Julius will orchestrate it as he sees fit, isn't that right, Larry?"

Larry coughed. "You bet, boss."

"So you see." Mr. Karp gave a satisfied nod. "It's the best thing for everyone."

The best thing for everyone. Diana in Madame Bovary. So the rumors were true. Margo had expected as much, but still, hearing it straight from the horse's mouth felt so terribly final. She stared at her lap, willing herself not to cry.

It was as if Mr. Karp could read her thoughts. "Margo, dear, I know you're disappointed," he said, his tone gentle. "If it makes you feel any better, Kurtzman did mention you for the part. But in the end, it wasn't his decision to make, and in time, you'll see I was right. A part like this, playing this kind of woman, this Emma Bovary, an unfaithful woman, an impure woman"-he moved his hand through the air as though waving away a particularly bad smell-"that isn't for you. Especially not under the circ.u.mstances."

Under the circ.u.mstances?

"What circ.u.mstances?" Margo finally found her voice. "What are you talking about?"

Mr. Karp nodded solemnly at Larry Julius, who produced a briefcase from behind his chair. From this he took several pieces of paper and placed them carefully on Mr. Karp's desk. They were magazine pages, or rather, they were the mock-ups magazines made of their pages, showing how things should be laid out before they were sent to the printer. Margo recognized the familiar typeface of Picture Palace in the headline that marched across the top: Is There No Decency?

Yet Another "Wholesome" Hollywood Couple Discovered Living in Scandalous Sin!

And then beneath it all, there were pictures of Dane and Margo. Not the usual film or publicity stills the magazines usually ran, but a grainy photograph that looked like something you'd get from a private investigator. Margo leaving the house in Malibu in the early-morning light; Dane bare-chested under his dressing gown, watching her go. The two of them half dressed, caught in an intimate moment on the small strip of sand behind that house that was supposed to be Dane's beach.

Dane's private beach.

Margo's head was spinning. Wildly, she scanned the close-set type, but the smudged letters seemed to swirl together in a crazy jumble. All she could make out were a few phrases:

Malibu love nest ... Hotbed of immorality ... What must her parents think?

"Oh no," Margo gasped. "Oh no, oh no, oh no."

Mr. Karp was shaking his head. "Personally, I don't understand why the public wants to see this trash. In the old days, the magazines kept out of the gutter. All of a sudden, it's a race to the bottom, ever since that disgraceful story in Photoplay last year."

"Hollywood's Unmarried Husbands and Wives." Already it was one of the most notorious articles ever to hit the movie colony. A roundup of virtually every major player living illicitly-or even more scandalously, extramaritally-with a lover, it had ruined careers, angered the Hays Office (the Hollywood censors who took it upon themselves to make sure stars stayed pure enough for Middle America, on- and offscreen), inspired "moral" boycotts all over the country, and destroyed more than one marriage to a formerly pliant partner who had been more than happy to look the other way, as long as affairs weren't made public. It's the knowing that's the problem, Margo thought. Look at Vivien Leigh. She'd been living for ages with Laurence Olivier, and n.o.body minded a bit, even though they were both married to other people. Then David O. Selznick picked her to play Scarlett O'Hara, the tabloids started sniffing around, and all of a sudden, Olivier got s.h.i.+pped off to New York to do a play and poor Vivien had a twenty-four-hour armed guard posted around her house, just in case he should somehow manage to slip away. Everything's fine as long as no one knows who you are.

Margo looked back down at the pictures of her and Dane. Of their life, their most private, most intimate life splashed across the pages for millions of strangers to pore over, leer at, disapprove of. Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, she thought of that horrible night at Doris's coming-out party all those months ago, of Phipps McKendrick pus.h.i.+ng her down on the lawn, of his fury and confusion when she tried to fight him off, as if he thought she was supposed to be there for him to do with whatever he wanted. As if she had no right to any feelings or desires of her own.

As if I were a thing.

Margo felt like she was going to be sick.

Dane, however, was all business, his voice urgent and low. "What's to be done?"

"There's only one thing to do in a situation like this."

Larry Julius seemed to have taken over, and in a way, Margo was relieved. Larry could give her the bad news straight, without couching it in a lot of meaningless sentimentality or guilt about how disappointed he was that she hadn't turned out to be such a nice girl after all. Larry Julius didn't think anyone was a nice girl. "Thanks to my guy on the inside, we have a week before this is due to go to press. Plenty of time to change the story."

Margo braced herself. No tearful scenes. No special pleading. He'd tell her she'd have to give Dane up, and she'd take it like a man. They both would.

Larry smiled. "Congratulations, you two. You're getting married."

"Married?"

It was so different, so totally, utterly, wonderfully different from what she'd been expecting that Margo couldn't help but scream. "We're getting married?"

"Sure, d.u.c.h.ess." Larry laughed. "What'd you think? We haven't had a big studio wedding in a long time, and there's no time like the present. It'll be a gas to plan. And we'll have the press along every step of the way: the ring, the bridesmaids, the dress, and of course the ceremony. We'll have to throw it all together in a hurry, but n.o.body can do it like we can. Shouldn't take more than about six weeks."