Starstruck (21 page)

“Doris!” Margo could have cried. “It’s you!”

“Yes, and who is this?”

“It’s me,” Margo said, confused. “It’s Margaret.”

“Oh! Margaret!” Doris sounded surprised. “How are you? Have you met Diana Chesterfield yet?”

What?
“No,” Margo began, “I—”

“What about Dane Forrest? Did you meet him?”

Margo was flabbergasted. The first time she’d managed to
get her friend on the phone since she’d come to Hollywood, and that was all she could ask? “H-haven’t you seen
Variety
this morning?” she stammered.

“A variety of what?”

“
Variety
. They have it on the newsstand by school. It’s a trade paper.”

“What do you trade it with?”

“No,
trade
. As in
the movie trade
.” Margo sighed. She had counted on Doris’s already knowing everything that she didn’t have the strength to explain herself. “It’s like a movie magazine, except more, I don’t know, businesslike.”

“I guess I don’t really keep up as much with that sort of stuff without you here,” Doris said. “That was always more your thing, really. Oh! That reminds me! The invitations for my coming-out party arrived last week! I just sent yours care of the studio. I didn’t know where else to send it.”

“Doris,”
Margo scolded. “It’ll get mixed in with the general fan mail that way. I told you to write me at that P.O. Box address I sent you.”

“Oh.” Doris sounded perplexed. “I guess I forgot. I’ll put another one in the mail. But anyway, it’s July seventeenth, at the club, of course. Please, please come, I don’t care what my mother says, I want you to be there.”

“Why?” Margo felt something in her neck tighten. “What does your mother say?”

“Oh, I don’t know.… Listen, Margie, I have to go. Evelyn is honking the horn.”

“Evelyn
Gamble
?”

“Uh-huh. Lucky duck. Her parents bought her a brand-new
Packard convertible for her eighteenth birthday—can you believe it? So we’re driving down to the beach.”

“You’re going to the beach with
Evelyn Gamble
?”

“Oh, Margie, don’t be like that. I know you two always rubbed each other the wrong way, but she’s really not so bad when you get to know her.…” Doris put her hand over the receiver. “
Yes, Evvie, I’m coming!
Listen, I’ve really got to go. Talk to you later, movie star!”

Margo hung up the phone, feeling even worse than before.
“More your thing”? “What my mother says”? “EVVIE”?
Hardly two months had passed since Margaret had left Pasadena. Could things have really changed so much?

The doorbell rang. Hastily, Margo threw her dressing gown over her pajamas and went to the door. A studio gofer was staggering under the weight of an enormous bouquet of white and yellow daisies. “Delivery for Miss Sterling,” he said through a mouthful of petals.

“Just put it down there,” Margo said, pointing to the small coffee table. Her heart leapt.
Dane!
The flowers had to be from him; who else would have sent them? Surely this was his way of telling her they were in this together, that he felt the same way she did and meant to see it through. A small yellow envelope was tucked behind a fern. She tore it open greedily the moment the delivery boy was gone.

Gloomily, Margo shoved the card under the vase, where she wouldn’t have to look at it. Really, it was preposterous; what would Margaret Frobisher have said if she could see her doppelgänger now, moping around in her dressing gown because the wrong movie star had sent her a huge bunch of flowers? And why should she have expected to hear from Dane anyway? He must have been mortified. For all she knew, he was still in love with Diana and devastated by her absence, just like the studio’s last press release claimed. He was just being polite asking Margo to dance; she was the one who’d gone and fallen all over him like a rag doll. He probably blamed her for the whole thing.

Margo studied the front page of
Variety
for what felt like the millionth time that day. The picture was pretty nice, actually. Margo and Dane, surrounded by twinkling lights on the shimmering dance floor of the Cocoanut Grove, her head resting cozily on his shoulder, gazing up at him as though they were the only two people in the world. An awfully romantic scene, if you could ignore the poisonous words beside it:

“Don’t tell me you’re reading that again?” Gabby, clad in her rehearsal leotard, stood at the open entrance of the bungalow. “Just throw it away.”

“It won’t help,” Margo said miserably. “I’ve practically committed it to memory.”

“Forget it.”

“ ‘The shameless Sterling’? ‘Her cold little claws’?” Margo swept the paper off the table. It landed on the floor with an unsatisfying rustle. “How could they be so mean?”

Gabby shrugged. “It’s their job.”

“Well, it’s a horrid job. Who wants to read that kind of sordid rubbish anyway?”

“Oh, Margo. Everyone.” Gabby came inside and lay across the sofa, arching her back like a languid cat. Her legs looked like matchsticks in their dark rehearsal tights. “Haven’t you heard the saying there’s no such thing as bad publicity?”

“This is,” Margo insisted fiercely. “For God’s sake, Gabby, they make me sound like some kind of predator.” She quoted again from the hateful text. “ ‘Made a beeline for the grieving Mr. Forrest’? Dane was the one who asked me to dance! I didn’t even see him until he started talking to Larry.”

“If you say so. I wasn’t there.”
No
, Margo thought,
you were practically unconscious and had to be carried home with vomit stains all over your dress
. “What does Dane think about this?”

“Horrified, probably. I can’t even think about it.”

“Well, who are the flowers from, then?” Gabby jerked her pointy little chin toward the daisies.

“Jimmy.”

“Jimmy Molloy?” Gabby’s forehead wrinkled. “Why is he sending
you
flowers?”

Margo shrugged. “He seems to think this is a good thing.”

“Well, everyone knows who you are now.” Gabby narrowed her eyes. “Different flowers are supposed to mean different things, aren’t they? What are daisies?”

“I don’t know.” Margo thought back to the interminable flower-arranging sessions in Miss Schoonmaker’s Poise and Presence class back in Pasadena. “Friendship, I think.”

“Oh.” Gabby seemed mollified. “That’s all right, then. But you really haven’t heard from Dane?”

“Not a whimper.”

“Well, it’s still so early. Maybe he hasn’t seen the papers yet. Maybe he sleeps late. Or maybe he’s been up for hours, planning to send you some kind of elaborate and lavish gift that you couldn’t possibly have received yet. Like a diamond. Or a car. Or a horse. Or …” Before Gabby got any farther down the wish list, the doorbell rang again.

“Urgent delivery for Miss Sterling,” said the delivery boy in the doorway. Margo pounced on him, ripping the thin tissue-paper envelope open like a wild animal.

“What is it?” Gabby cried breathlessly. “Is it from him?”

“No.” Margo was pale. “It’s from Mr. Karp’s office. He wants me to come in for a meeting this afternoon.”

Neither girl had to say out loud how serious this was. In the best-case scenario, a summons to the office of the all-powerful studio chief might mean something wonderful, like you’d been nominated for an Oscar. On a day when the biggest movie
magazine in the country had chosen to run a scandalous story about you, it was very bad news indeed.

Gabby finally spoke. “Remember. Talk about America. America, and Pasadena, and how much you love it there, and your wonderful mother …”

“Gabby.” Margo silenced her with a grim laugh. “If I could do that, I’d be the greatest actress in the world.”

“H
ave a seat, dear.” The secretary gestured toward a low stool against the wall, wedged between two miniature palm trees. “He’ll be with you in a moment.”

Feeling meek and small, Margo did as she was told. It was exactly as though she were sitting outside the headmistress’s office at Orange Grove. Anxiously, she wiped her sweaty palms against the scratchy fabric of the pleated plaid skirt she had chosen to wear, a holdover from her old life.
If I’m going to be punished like a naughty schoolgirl
, she thought,
I might as well look the part
.

A tall, distinguished-looking gentleman strode briskly through the office door and into the reception area. The secretary sprang abruptly to her feet. “Mr. Payne! You’re finished so soon!” She was practically standing at attention. “Shall I call a car to take you to the airport?”

The man ignored her. Instead, he cast his hooded gaze toward Margo, raking his eyes lazily from the top of her head to the tips of her toes—with a lot of meaningful lingering on certain parts in between. “No need. I’ve got my driver waiting outside.”

“Of course. Of course, Mr. Payne. Have a safe journey, and we’re so looking forward to seeing you again.”

“Hmmm.” The man looked thoughtful. “How I wish I could say the same.”

So that’s Hunter Payne
. Now that Margo saw him in person, it all made perfect sense. Hollywood, for all its bluster, was a glittering colony of strivers, scrappy immigrants, and small-town dreamers, but everything about Hunter Payne, from the knife-edged crease in his trousers to the easy grace of his walk, reeked of privileged entitlement, of a man who had never known a moment’s humiliation, heartbreak, or doubt.
A man like my father
, Margo thought, the kind of man she’d known all her life. No wonder everyone was afraid of him.

The secretary took a moment to recover after he had gone before she turned to Margo. “You can go in now, Miss Sterling.”

Fingering her little gold-and-pearl pin, affixed to the Peter Pan collar of her blouse, Margo took a deep breath and opened the door.

The inner office of Leo F. Karp was furnished to look like an ocean liner. Not a ship’s cabin or even an officer’s quarters, but the ocean liner itself. Since her arrival at Olympus, Margo had overheard a few competing theories as to the reason for the nautical theme. Some said it was meant to evoke the great ship on which Karp had sailed to America as a small boy; other, more cynical types whispered that the studio boss, famously
extravagant (at least when it came to himself), had simply resolved to choose the most lavish and ruinously expensive design scheme his designer could imagine, and this turned out to be the winner. But whatever the motivation, there was no denying the grandeur of the place. Long, curving walls were covered in creamy white leather, punctuated by baseboards of inky mahogany. A luxurious white silk carpet, laid in narrow panels, emulated a newly whitewashed deck. The windows were round, like portholes looking out onto the sea. And all the way at the back, behind an enormous white prow of a desk and dressed in a crisp suit of nautical navy, was Leo Karp himself, the fearless captain at the mighty helm. It looked like a fantasy out of a movie, which of course was exactly what it was.

Tentatively, Margo inched forward, wondering what the protocol was. Should she curtsey? Should she wait for him to speak, as one did with the king of England?

To her surprise, the all-powerful head of the biggest studio in Hollywood came barreling excitedly toward her with his arms outstretched.

“My darling Miss Sterling! How marvelous to see you at last!” He seized her hands, planting noisy kisses on each of her cheeks. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for stopping by on such short notice.”

As though I had a choice
, Margo thought. “Of course. I’m thrilled to be here.”

“Let me look at you.” With her hands still clasped in his, he held her out at arm’s length, as though to get a better view. She took the opportunity to conduct an examination of her own. Mr. Karp was short. Very short. Even for Hollywood, where, in Margo’s still inexpert opinion, people were by and large shorter
than any grown people had a right to be. Though she was wearing her flat oxfords, he barely reached her nose, and his feet, clad in highly polished spectator wingtips, looked no bigger than a doll’s. But he was solidly built, broad shouldered and barrel chested in a way that almost made you forget his diminutive stature and twinkling eyes. Sure, he looked a little like a teddy bear, but a teddy bear who could beat the hell out of you if he wanted to.