Starstruck - Love Me Part 3

Gabby rushed off to her bedroom with a squeal of thanks, clutching her prizes to her chest. Amanda read on:

But ever since his trip to Splitsville with t.i.tian-haired Olympus s.e.xpot Amanda Farraday (where's she been, anyway?), young Mr. Gordon has been seen in a number of Party Palaces for Picture People looking noticeably downcast ... and with a noticeably empty escorting arm. Hopefuls of Hollywood, speaking to you as a Starstruck Sister, can't you find an open spot on your busy dance cards for poor wittle Hawwy? Who knows? Liven up his lonely nights and there might even be a part in it for you ... just steer clear of the mysteriously missing Miss Farraday. Redheads have a temper, you know.

That was all Amanda needed to see.

Gleefully, she planted a huge smack on the smudged leaf of paper and laid it on her pillow as carefully as if it were a sleeping child. Then she walked back to the wardrobe and took a good, long look in the mirror for the first time in weeks.

Her figure, always fas.h.i.+onably slim, looked scrawny. Her bright hair was disheveled and desperately in need of a wash. Her once creamy skin was deathly pale, and there were violet bags under her eyes from endless tears and sleepless nights.

But, she thought as she hauled her battered Louis Vuitton monogrammed steamer trunk from under the bed, all that can be fixed.

She'd eat a few big meals, rich with b.u.t.ter and cream. Her hair would be perfumed and set. As for her famously gorgeous face, all it needed was a little rouge and powder and a few nights of good sleep.

And I'll sleep now. Wherever she wound up that night, she'd sleep like a baby.

Because everything was going to be all right. The evidence was right there, literally in black-and-white.

Harry Gordon was still hers.

And all she had to do was turn herself back into the girl he'd fallen in love with. She'd make him forget all about her past. She'd make him remember that she was the answer to all of his prayers.

It wasn't going to be easy.

But like her old flame Dane Forrest had once told her, "In Hollywood, all the real acting happens offscreen."

FOUR.

"How come you never let me drive?"

"Because," Viola Preston said tersely, struggling to pilot the unwieldy Preston family Cadillac along the winding road that led to the gates of the studio. "You don't know how, and you don't have a license."

Gabby pouted at her reflection in the rearview mirror, smoothing her unruly curls with her hand. "I could get one. I'm sixteen. And I do know how to drive. I had to drive that old jalopy in Farm Fancies, remember? All I'd have to do is go down and take the test."

"And when are we supposed to find the time to do that?" Viola shook her head. "You're scheduled to the hilt as it is. The only time you've got free for months is the middle of the night, and I'm pretty sure the Department of Motor Vehicles isn't open then."

"We could ask them. You never know, they might make an exception for an Olympus star."

Viola chuckled indulgently. "An Olympus star doesn't drive herself. An Olympus star has a chauffeur."

"I suppose that's you. In which case, where the h.e.l.l is your little hat?"

Viola smiled. "Just remember, Gabrielle, to keep your eye on the prize. We're just about there."

They were turning onto the studio lot now, and Gabby marveled, as she often did, at her mother's uncannily cinematic sense of timing. Even now, there was something about entering Olympus, about being waved through its glittering pink stone gates with their famous iron doors wrought with an elaborate motif of stars and moons and lightning bolts, that made Gabby feel like it was all happening, like everything was suddenly within her grasp. Like all of her dreams were about to come true.

Especially today. Today, she was going to sing for the first time with Eddie Sharp.

It made her laugh now to think what a b.i.t.c.h she'd been about listening to his record. Because the moment she'd gotten over herself and plunked it on the turntable, it was as if her entire world had changed. Gabby closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the memory of the first time she'd heard the plaintive, almost human wail of the clarinet, of the drumbeat that sounded so much like a racing heart. The swinging numbers made you need to dance; the slow ones made you want to weep. It was like the music she'd been waiting for her whole life.

There was a lot Gabby didn't know. She had never really been to school, could barely read and write, couldn't do much with numbers besides figure out how to deduct an agent's percentage. Sometimes she thought she didn't really get people very well, didn't understand why they would tell a lie or why they got so mad when you said something aloud that everyone already knew.

But Gabby Preston knew music. She understood it the way she understood that she was happy, or sad, or hungry. She could tell when it was right and when it was wrong as effortlessly as telling green from red or as someone-someone who wasn't her, anyway-might recognize the letter B and know what sound it made. And she could tell that Eddie Sharp understood it that way too.

So they would understand each other. They were going to be incredible together. Already Gabby had listened to that record, Sharp Turns Ahead, twenty, maybe thirty times, working out harmonies and counterpoints, going crazy over how perfectly the velvety tone of her voice blended with the warmth of Eddie's clarinet. It was a match made in music heaven. There was a Jewish word she'd heard Mr. Karp use when he was in one of his sentimental moods, saying how something was destined, ordained by G.o.d-beshert, she thought it was. He'd been talking about the budget for the latest Jimmy Molloy musical, but it was a good word nonetheless, a good word for how she felt.

Gabby and Eddie were meant to be. It was fate. He'd see that right away, she was sure of it, and maybe when his band went on tour that summer, he'd take her with them.

G.o.d, wouldn't that be something? On tour with a band, traveling on her own, playing a million different clubs in a million different cities. Big clubs with women wearing diamonds and men wearing black tie; small clubs that were no more than a couple of field hands drinking corn whiskey in overalls at a splintered table-it didn't matter. For the first time in her life, Gabby would be doing exactly what she wanted to do, which was sing. No more hideous dance rehearsals that started at dawn and didn't end until every muscle in her body was screaming with agony. No more hair ribbons and ringlets and frilly little-girl dresses; no more pills to keep her thinner than was humanly possible. She'd be doing the one thing she could do better than anyone else. She'd be a star, and when-if-she finally came back to the picture business, it would be on her terms, as a woman who'd traveled, had adventures, had lovers (the fact that the picture of Eddie in last month's issue of Picture Palace seemed to get cuter every time she looked at it didn't hurt any either). Hollywood would look at her and see a woman who had lived.

Not, Gabby thought darkly, a girl who has to have her mother drive her everywhere.

Viola unsteadily piloted the big Cadillac down the narrow brick street lined with jacaranda trees that led to the rehearsal complex behind the studio commissary. A burly man with the build of a gorilla greeted them at the doorway.

"Miss Preston." He nodded at Gabby, dropping ash from his cigar all down the front of his spread-collared sport s.h.i.+rt. "They're expecting you. Go right in."

"Thank you."

Viola started to follow her through the doorway. The man held up a meaty hand. "Not you. You can't come in."

"What?" Viola's eyes, lined with the same heavy kohl she'd been wearing since the Roaring Twenties, when the Egyptian vamp look was the bee's knees, narrowed with rage. "What are you talking about?"

"Just what I said. This is a closed rehearsal."

Viola sputtered, "But ... but don't you know who I am?"

"Lady, I don't care if you're Eleanor Roosevelt, Eddie Sharp rehea.r.s.es with musicians only. If you ain't a musician, you ain't coming in. Them's the breaks."

"Well." Viola looked around, as though at any moment she expected someone to come bursting out of the bushes to tell her this was a prank. "Well. I want to speak to the music department. I want to speak to Herman Steiner."

"Talk to whoever you want," the man said, in as airy a tone as a six-foot-four gorilla could muster. "I don't know about any Herman Steiner. I work for Eddie Sharp, and how he wants it, that's how I fixes it."

"Well," Viola repeated. "We'll see about that. Come along, Gabby."

Gabby s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand out of her mother's grasp.

"I would, but it's getting late, Vi. Why don't you just go? I'm sure it's only a misunderstanding. By the time you get back, we'll be all rehea.r.s.ed and you can tell us how swell it sounds."

With a final scowl, Viola stormed off in the direction of Mr. Steiner's office. She was wearing a net hat dotted with small white blossoms that stood out vividly against her bright red hair, making her look for all the world like a plump spotted mushroom from a Walt Disney cartoon. The gorilla stepped aside to let Gabby through, and as she squeezed past him, she could have sworn she saw him wink.

Meant to be, Gabby thought. Wherever he was, Eddie Sharp understood her even better than she dreamed he would.

Studio 16 was one of the larger practice rooms on the Olympus lot, big enough for a rehearsal piano with plenty of room to tap, but Gabby had never imagined what it would look like playing host to a twenty-piece orchestra. The scene inside was chaos. Black instrument cases were stacked haphazardly on every available surface; a forest of metal music stands, some overturned, spilled reams of annotated sheet music onto the floor. The musicians, seemingly oblivious to the mess, stood around the room in groups, thick blue clouds of cigarette smoke forming as they talked and laughed and argued, occasionally bringing an instrument to their lips to tootle out a note or two, as if to prove a point.

But which the h.e.l.l one is Eddie Sharp?

Smoothing her dress nervously, Gabby spotted a tallish figure at the far end of the room with his back to her. He sported a black porkpie hat tilted at a rakish angle and had a thick blue winter scarf made of some kind of fuzzy cashmere material wound snugly around his neck. He was speaking animatedly to a group of men clutching bra.s.s instruments. They seemed to be hanging on his every word.

Bingo, Gabby thought.

Her excitement mounting with every step, she walked toward the broad back and cleared her throat loudly.

The man turned around. Gabby gasped. Clearly, she had made a mistake. First of all, this guy was holding a saxophone, and Eddie Sharp didn't play the sax.

Second of all, Eddie Sharp wasn't black.

"Gabby Preston!" the man exclaimed, flas.h.i.+ng her a smile that made his eyes crinkle around the edges in a way that was disconcertingly adorable. "You're here. Sorry, you're catching us on one of our breaks."

"That's all right," Gabby said, flas.h.i.+ng her dimples to try to disguise her surprise-the last thing she wanted to do was to make the poor guy feel self-conscious over her mistake.

Yet surprised she was. Not at seeing a Negro sax player-G.o.d knew there were plenty of those. But here at Olympus, it wasn't exactly your usual bowl of chicken soup, so to speak. ... Olympus, like all the major studios, put famous black performers into its so-called race pictures, designed for Negro audiences. Some producers, like David O. Selznick, had even begun to give them bigger roles in mainstream films-word on the street had it that Hattie McDaniel was going to be so good in his Gone with the Wind that she might even be in contention for an Oscar next year ... that is, if the Biltmore would allow her to attend a ceremony. But to have a black performer play a servant in the film adaptation of a bestselling book was one thing; to have one playing alongside white musicians in a band was quite another. Not that Leo Karp had anything against Negroes. But like practically ever other studio head in Hollywood, he was a Jew, and in the eyes of bigots like Father Coughlin and the Ku Klux Klan, that already made his products suspect, so Mr. Karp, with a wors.h.i.+p of Traditional American Values that bordered on fetis.h.i.+stic, was even more wary of integration than most. As far as Leo Karp was concerned, politics were politics and business was business, and he was in the business of giving people what they wanted and making money doing it. An integrated picture might be banned from playing in half the theaters in the country, and if it couldn't play in the South, it might as well not play at all.

"That's all right," Gabby repeated. Her smile was starting to stiffen. She tried to refresh it by thinking about things that made her happy, like her acting coach had taught her when she first came to Olympus. Puppies, she thought. Driving lessons. Lemon meringue pie. Singing. Gershwin. Eddie Sharp. "That's perfectly all right."

"Glad to hear it." The man's smile didn't look the slightest bit feigned. "Well, I think we've been breaking long enough. We can get this party started any time you want. Your song's all set."

"My song?" Gabby's rictus smile crumbled. She hadn't told them what she planned to sing-h.e.l.l, she hadn't decided herself. "What do you mean, my song?"

"The one Eddie marked up for you." He shuffled through a packet of paper on a nearby music stand and handed her a creased sheet. "You read music?"

"At least as well as I read English."

Technically true. Gabby s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from him, willing herself to make sense of either the tangle of notes or the tangle of letters dancing before her eyes on the page, with no hope of her brain ever catching up to them.

"Aw, you know it." Almost as though he could sense her frustration, the guy broke easily into song. "First you put your two knees, close up tight ... then you swing 'em to the left and you swing 'em to the right." Lifting his horn to his lips, he played the next couple of bars.

"Ballin' the Jack," Gabby snapped. The knowing look in his eyes was getting on her nerves. "Of course I know it. Why would I want to sing that old thing? It's kid stuff."

"Maybe, but so is 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket,' and Ella Fitzgerald did pretty well for herself with that. Eddie thinks you sound like her."

Gabby pulled herself up to her full four feet eleven inches. "Watch it, buddy. I'm Gabby Preston. I don't sound like anyone."

He laughed. Why the h.e.l.l is he so d.a.m.n smiley? "Believe me, if someone says you sing like Ella, I'd take it."

"Where is Eddie?" Gabby said. "I want to talk to him."

"Oh, Eddie never rehea.r.s.es with the guest vocalists. That's my job."

"Oh. Well, who are you?"

"Dexter Harrington," he said, tipping his hat. "Lead horn, side man, and second in command, I guess you could say."

"Well, I want to talk to Eddie," Gabby demanded. "If I have to sing with Eddie Sharp, then I want to rehea.r.s.e with Eddie Sharp."

"I told you, baby, Eddie's not here," Dexter Harrington said. "Eddie's gone."

Baby? Gabby was furious. Just who did this Eddie Sharp character think he was, anyway? First he wanted to make her sing that stupid song, and then he didn't even have the decency to be there to sell her on it.

Figures. Just when you got your hopes up about a guy, he turned out to be a louse like all the others. And as for this Dexter Harrington, well, no side man was going to call her "baby" and get away with it. Not at her studio.

"Fine," Gabby said. "Then I'm gone too."

Turning on her heel, she started to march toward the door, kicking over a music stand for good measure. It fell to the ground with a heavy thud, practically crus.h.i.+ng the feet of a couple of trombone players standing nearby. Good, Gabby thought meanly. Maybe now they'll notice I'm here. She kicked over another one, scattering paper and pencils all over the floor.

"All right," Dexter called after her. "I get the point. But suppose this: before you rip the place apart any worse than you already have, suppose you tell me what you want to sing."

In her fury, the reasonableness of his request took Gabby by surprise. "Is this some sort of trick question?"

He held up his hands, sax and all. "No trick, I swear. Come on. What's your favorite song to sing? If you could sing anything in the world."

Gabby blinked. "I don't know. 'I Got Rhythm,' maybe. Or 'Someone to Watch Over Me.' "

"Gershwin." Dexter nodded seriously. "Now we're talking." Without taking his eyes from Gabby's face, he sat down at the piano and, betraying not even the slightest hint of hesitation, brought his hands down into the first cras.h.i.+ng chords of Gershwin's famous Rhapsody in Blue. In spite of herself, Gabby closed her eyes for a moment as the music enfolded her, letting the sensual yearning of the familiar melody shut out everything else.

"Poor George," Dexter said sadly, shaking his head. "I felt like they ripped my heart out when I heard he pa.s.sed. They don't make 'em like that anymore. And the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet."

"Wait-wait a minute," Gabby stammered. "You knew George Gershwin?"

"Sure." Dexter's fingers never left the keys. "That's tragedy for you. Tumor of the brain. Cut down in the prime of life. Sure, look at everything he accomplished, but there could have been so much more. And like I said, that cat was the genuine article. A genuine Grade-A genius. But I guess I don't have to tell you."

"Where did you know him from?"

"Paris," Dexter said easily. Without missing a beat, his fingers tripped seamlessly into the opening of An American in Paris. "You know." He winked. "That city they keep over in France."

"You were in Paris? With George Gershwin? George Gershwin was in Paris?"

"Of course. Where do you think he wrote this?"

He had skipped ahead a bit now, to the part of the opening movement that reminded Gabby of a bunch of forgetful soldiers scrambling to their places on patrol-da-da-da-da-da-dee-duh, da-da-da-da-dee-duh. "So what do you say, Gabby Preston?" Dexter continued. "How about we put these lazy b.u.ms here to use and give 'Ballin' the Jack' a try? Okay?"

Okay, Gabby wanted to say. The other musicians had slowly advanced on the piano, instruments in hand. What was it she'd heard that British actor say on the radio, about music having charms that could soothe the savage beast? Gabby knew she could be a beast, all right, and she also knew that if Dexter could play this way, she wanted desperately to hear the rest of them. She wanted to sing, to let loose and match them note for note, to really show them what she could do.

And maybe she would have. If she hadn't at that moment turned her head toward the window and seen a gleaming white limousine pull up outside the wardrobe department across the street. A uniformed chauffeur hopped out to open the pa.s.senger door, and out came Miss Margo Sterling herself, wearing a beatific smile and about a thousand bucks' worth of blond fox fur that perfectly matched her golden hair. Rex Mandalay, the temperamental genius behind the Olympus fas.h.i.+on machine, leapt out of the doorway to greet her, practically kneeling before her custom-made alligator pumps as he bent to kiss her hand.

Like she's a G.o.dd.a.m.n princess, Gabby thought. Viola's words swam into her head, the very ones Gabby had repeated so many times herself, not least of all to Margo Sterling herself on her very first day at Olympus: If you want to be a star, you've got to act like one.