Confessions of a Hollywood Star (18 page)

But I had been totally right about one thing. After everything had been explained to him (and Mr Triolo’s aubergine parmigiana had worked its magic), Charley Hottle acted like a man of reason and generosity.

“Don’t worry,” said Charley Hottle. “I’ll have my watch back tomorrow. And before my ex-employee leaves, he and I will have a talk with Mrs Seiser. You can tell Gracia to expect a call to come back to work
and
an apology.”

I couldn’t have been happier if I’d just won an Oscar. Not that Gracia needed the job at Bergstrom’s any more. Between Morty’s mom and Sam’s dad, she was already in full-time employment. But it meant she could tell Mrs Seiser to take her uniform and her nametag and her cleaning cart and shove it down a toilet.

Charley Hottle pushed his empty plate away. “There’s one other thing I’d like to do.” He looked from me to Ella. “I’d like to give you both a little spot in the movie. We need a couple of girls to walk past Lucy Rio in the high school corridor.”

Ella smiled. “Really?”

But I didn’t smile. I was surprised to realize that this announcement didn’t exactly make jubilation race through my heart.

Sam caught the look on my face. “Now what?”

“Well…” I shrugged. “I don’t know if I really want to be in the movie any more.”

“What?” Charley Hottle was surprised, too. “I thought you’d be happy. I thought that was what you wanted.”

“It was,” I said. “It is. It’s just that…”

Charley Hottle, Ella and Sam all said, “It’s just what?”

It was the hypocrisy. If Charley Hottle wasn’t always going on about family values and his kids and his wife I really wouldn’t care what he did in his spare time. I mean, it wouldn’t be any of my business, would it? But he was always going on about it. He was like that TV preacher who told people what a major sin adultery is, and then they caught him with a prostitute. I figured that if I accepted a part in the movie I’d be saying it’s all right to say one thing and do something else.

I shrugged. “It’s just that I feel uncomfortable.” I kept my eyes on the candle in the middle of the table. “You know, because of your girlfriend.”

Ella sighed. “Oh… I get it.”

Charley Hottle turned to Sam. “Now what’s she talking about?”

Sam said, “Umph.” He looked like he was hoping the floor was going to collapse and take him with it.

“You know…” I was mumbling. “The woman you had in your room.”

Charley Hottle turned to me. He was half-smiling, like maybe I was making a joke he didn’t understand. “You mean my wife?”

Ella looked hopeful. “That was your wife?”

“Of course it was my wife.”

But I wasn’t going to start ringing the bells of joy just yet. “I thought your wife’s called Tamara.”

I’d expected Charley Hottle to get all angry and defensive, but instead he grinned. “It is Tamara.” He gave me a wink. “Maybe you’d like to take a wild guess at what my nickname for her is.”

“Oh, let me.” Sam shot me a you-forgot-to-check-the-oil-again look. “It couldn’t be Lil, could it?”

“So is it OK now?” Charley Hottle asked after we’d all stopped laughing. “Do we have a deal?”

I said we had a deal.

Sam wanted to know if being friends with Charley Hottle and getting the part and everything meant that we didn’t have to go to Carla’s party.

I said no.

“Ella and Morty are going with us. And besides, everybody’s going to be there. You can’t possibly think I’m going to miss my last chance to wipe the smile from the Santini’s face when she sees me being all pally with Charley Hottle. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.”

“You haven’t known Carla for your whole life.”

“Well it seems like I have.”

There was a communal gasp inside the Karmann Ghia as Carla’s house came into view.

Just in case you weren’t sure which mansion belonged to the Santinis, coloured floodlights waved gently across the New Jersey sky from the front lawn. There was a woman done up as Marilyn Monroe checking invitations at the door and a man dressed as Charlie Chaplin telling people where to park.

“Chrissake,” muttered Sam. “Doesn’t she know there are people starving on this planet?”

“I’m surprised she doesn’t have photographers lined up,” said Morty.

“She’s really surpassed herself this time, hasn’t she?” said Ella.

I sighed. “It’s exactly what you’d expect from someone who’s never gone without anything except a soul.”

“How long do we have to stay?” asked Sam as he came to a stop at the end of the street. He’d agreed to come, but he wasn’t going to be too gracious about it.

“For God’s sake, we haven’t even got out of the car yet.”

“I’d be really happy if we could do that straight away,” Morty grunted. “I think I may be permanently crippled.”

“I don’t know why I bothered ironing this dress,” complained Ella. “It looks like I slept in it.”

Sam still hadn’t taken the keys from the ignition or made any movement to open his door. “So how long?”

“No more than an hour.” I pulled the handle on the passenger side and more or less rolled out. “Just long enough to mingle a little and bid the Santini a fond farewell.”

“Right,” said Sam. “But if you’re not ready in an hour I’m leaving without you.”

The Hollywood theme was continued inside the house. All the waiters were dressed as movie stars, too, and Mr Santini was wearing a beret like an old-time director.

Morty and Sam went off to find a quiet corner where they could play backgammon until the hour was up.

Ella and I mingled.

“Gosh,” said Ella as we fought our way through the merry throngs. “She really did invite everyone, didn’t she?”

“Not everyone.” I didn’t see Charley Hottle – or anyone else from the movie for that matter. How was Carla going to see me being all pally with Charley Hottle if he wasn’t there?

Ella was less than sympathetic. “Does that mean we can leave?”

“No.”

Most of the revellers were in the back yard. Music was playing through a sophisticated sound system that seemed to be embedded in the trees and more floodlights wafted over the patio and the pool.

Never let it be said that Ella has no talent for stating the obvious.

“I can’t see her,” said Ella.

Neither did I. “That’s funny… It’s not like Carla to hide herself away.”

We went back into the house.

There were at least fifty people dancing in the living room, but none of them was related to Mr Santini.

Nor was Dellwood’s reigning monarch in the games room (ping-pong, pinball, video games and shuffleboard) or the dining room (more food than most of the world sees in a year) either.

“Isn’t the hour up yet?” grumbled Ella as we reached the entertainment room. “I’m exhausted. It’s like trying to get through the mall on Christmas Eve.”

“No. We go nowhere until I’ve accomplished my mission.” I opened the door.

The room was packed with people, and dark except for the light coming from the enormous TV screen that filled almost an entire wall, but I spotted Carla immediately. She was sitting in the middle of the sofa, flanked by the witches of Dellwood on either side. Everyone was watching the screen.

“I don’t get it,” whispered Ella. “What’s going on?”

Voices I’d barely heard at the time because I was kind of busy came back to me.
You mean Dellwood’s answer to Fellini…? The last time I saw her she was taking pictures of Lucy… I think she was going to shoot Bret eating his lunch…

“It looks like Carla’s made a movie.”

What I did on My Summer Vacation.

A great actor has to trust her instincts, but my instincts were taking a break right then because instead of backing out of the room I stayed where I was, riveted to the spectacle unfolding before my wondering eyes.

There was Charley Hottle waving his hands around like he was besieged by a swarm of flies. There was Lucy Rio sitting on a motorcycle. There was Bret Fork talking on his cell phone. And in almost every scene there was Carla, smiling like she’d just invented air. Alma must’ve been in charge of the camera.

Carla really has to be a witch, there’s no other explanation for what happened next.

The image on the screen froze and she suddenly turned around, as though she knew we were there all the time.

“Lola!” she cried.

Everyone else in the room turned around too.

“I was afraid you were going to miss the best part. It’s just coming up.”

Ella pulled on my arm. “Let’s go.”

My instincts weren’t just taking a break; they were asleep at the wheel. Instead of bolting I said, “I just wanted to say how sorry I am we didn’t see you on the set this summer. Charley Hottle said you made a great waiter in the scene in the diner.”

Alma, Marcia and Tina all tittered, but everyone else stayed silent, watching us the way you’d watch a gunfight.

“Maybe we didn’t see you because you weren’t actually in the movie like you said,” suggested Alma.

[Cue: raising of chin and confident smile.] “Oh, we were there. You’ll see when it comes out. We’re in the—”

Carla cut me off. “Of course they were there, Al.” She pressed the remote and the movie started playing again. “And here’s the proof.”

I gave a small, puzzled laugh. “Bret Fork eating a sandwich?”

Carla waved her diamond bracelet in my direction. “It’s should be right after this.”

The camera panned around the canteen at the other actors and crew having lunch and glided back to Bret, lifting a can of soda to his mouth. I knew what should be right after this.

“Oh my God…” whispered Ella. She knew too.

It was Ella and me being marched off the set. I could only hope that she was too far away to pick up the short but pithy lecture Mr Muscle gave us about not getting any closer to the production than Ottawa after this.

“Lola, let’s go,” hissed Ella.

I didn’t move.

Why not? Was it because I was mature enough to understand that what Carla had said in my dream was true: you can run, but you can never hide?

No, that wasn’t it. I mean, I was mature enough to understand that of course, but that wasn’t the reason I didn’t bolt for the door. I looked at Carla, smiling at me like the cat that’s just swallowed every fish in the lake. And at Marcia, Alma and Tina, smug as the devil’s own henchmen. And at the rest of the kids in the room, one eye on the TV and one eye on me. And I really didn’t care what any of them thought or believed. They weren’t my friends and they weren’t people I respected. I’d had more kindness shown to me by Gracia, who had plenty of reason to resent me, coming in and doing for fun what she did to survive. A disaster to Carla was breaking a fingernail. A disaster for Gracia was having her husband gunned down or losing her job. Working at Bergstrom’s had taught me a lot about the real world, and I didn’t think that Carla Santini had anything to do with it any more.

“Oh, I know what’s coming.” I was one beat ahead of the Carla Santini show. “This is where Ella and I were thrown off the set, isn’t it?”

And there we were, firmly in the grip of Mr Muscle, being shoved towards the road.

Mine was a free and easy laugh.

“Watch this!” I cried. “This is where I trip over a cable. Remember that, Ella? I nearly brought down the producer.”

One of the reasons I love Ella is because even though she worries a lot and dislikes serious confrontations, she always rises to the occasion.

Ella laughed too. “I thought you’d broken your ankle, the way you screamed.”

[Cue: more laughter from the gathered throng.]

“How come you look like that?” asked someone. “You look like you’d been swimming.”

“With sharks,” added someone else.

“We’d just walked along the shore and climbed up the cliff.” The Santini glass-bells laugh had nothing on my laugh. It sounded like wind chimes made by Tiffany.

There were a few hoots of “Really?” and “You’re kidding.”

“Well there was no other way to get up there, was there? The road was blocked for miles.”

Only Carla and the coven weren’t laughing along.

“I thought you said you had a part in the movie,” said Carla with this-cake-is-poisoned sweetness.

“That’s right, you said you had a part.” If all else fails, Alma could always become a professional echo chamber. “So why did you have to climb up the cliff?”

“You didn’t really believe I had a part, did you?” I gave Alma a pitying look. “I was just kidding. But then of course things got a little out of hand.” I turned to the crowd. “You want to hear what happened? It’s a lot more interesting than Carla’s movie, believe me.”

I can’t help feeling that acting’s gain could be something of a loss to the world of storytelling. If there’d been any aisles in the Santinis’ entertainment room I would’ve had my audience rolling in them with my many adventures of trying to get Charley Hottle’s attention.

“And that,” I said when my story finally came to its happy end, “is how I became a Hollywood star!”

[Cue: wild applause and the slamming of the door as Carla stalked from the room.]

After we drove Morty and Ella home Sam came back to my house with me.

“You never fail to amaze me,” said Sam. “I can’t believe you actually told everybody the truth for a change.”

I sat down next to him on the couch. “When I became a woman, I put away childish things,” I said.

“I hope that doesn’t mean me,” said Sam.

I said of course it didn’t. It meant Carla Santini. I said I was depending on him to pick me up from Brooklyn every weekend.

“Thanks,” said Sam. “It’s really nice to be appreciated.” He wanted to know what would happen if Charley Hottle gave me a bigger part in his next movie and I had to move to California. Did that mean I wouldn’t need him any more?

I said I figured a great mechanic could work anywhere.

Books by the same author

And Baby Makes Two
Away for the Weekend
Confessions of a Hollywood Star
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
I Conquer Britain
My Perfect Life
My Worst Best Friend
Planet Janet
Planet Janet In Orbit
Undercover Angel
Undercover Angel Strikes Again