Starstruck (29 page)

Jimmy emerged from the bedroom in his bare feet, dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt open at the neck. His damp hair was combed back slickly from his face. Wordlessly, he went to the bar and poured out two stiff drinks.

“Here,” he said flatly, handing Margo the glass of Scotch.

“Jimmy …”

“Drink it.” Even his voice had changed. Gone was the cheerful, mugging Jimmy she had heard “aw shucks” his way through so many interviews and public dates over the past several weeks. This Jimmy sounded terse, matter-of-fact, almost dangerous. Awfully ironic, Margo thought, that this of all possible situations seemed to have transformed silly, tap-dancing Jimmy into Humphrey Bogart.
Funny
, she mused,
I actually like him better this way
.

“Drink,” Jimmy repeated. “Don’t make me ask you again.”

She tossed the liquor down her throat in a single swallow, wincing at the burn.

“Good girl,” Jimmy said. He refilled both drinks. “Again.” He waited to speak until they’d drained their drinks for the second time. “Now tell me what you’re doing here.”

“It was Gabby.” Margo felt dizzy, as if a warm, spreading light were shining directly into her eyes. “Gabby said—”

“What? What did she say?”

“She told me you said to come here. To pick you up,” Margo
said helplessly. “She must have … she must have known you’d be …” She didn’t quite have the words to go on.

“It certainly looks that way,” Jimmy said grimly. He poured himself another drink and held out the bottle to Margo. She shook her head. “She must have overheard me making arrangements with Roderigo on the phone today.”

Roderigo
. It was shocking, somehow, knowing the handsome boy’s name. Margo wondered if he was listening to them through the door. “You mean … Gabby … knows about …”

“I don’t know what she knows and what she doesn’t. She probably thought it was a dame I was meeting. Maybe not. Gabby may act like a little kid, but she’s been around show people her whole life. She’s not exactly an innocent flower when it comes to this sort of thing.”

“But why? Why would she do such a thing?”

“Oh, I’m sure she had her reasons. Maybe she was bored and wanted a laugh. Maybe she was jealous, or maybe she figured it’d scare you off and she’d inherit me. Who knows what’s going through that pill-crazed little mind of hers right now?”

“Gabby’s in love with you,” Margo said suddenly, although she wasn’t sure why she felt the need to defend her faithless friend.

“No.” The ghost of a smile played across the shadow of Jimmy’s face. “Gabby Preston is in love with the idea of me, or more accurately, the idea of herself with me. She wants to be America’s Sweetheart, part of an iconic couple. As far as she’s concerned, this”—he gestured toward the closed bedroom door—“is no barrier to entry.” He swallowed his drink. “Don’t be sore at Gabby, Margo. However selfish her reasons, in a way
it’s rather a relief you found out. Not the ideal situation, perhaps, but at least you didn’t have to hear it from someone else.”

“Someone else? What do you mean, someone else?”

Jimmy let out a short bark of a laugh. “Oh, come on, Margo. You don’t think it’s just by chance the powers that be oh-so-patiently nurtured our young romance into being, do you? And just after your little tête-a-tête with Dane Forrest too? One star, one ascendant: nasty gossip dogging both. Put them together and it cancels out the scandal. Publicity 101.”

“If you don’t like what they’re saying, change the conversation,” Margo said quietly.

“The oldest trick in the book. And as an added bonus, with a guy like me they wouldn’t have to worry about you getting into trouble. In the family way, I mean.” Jimmy smiled at her, with what looked like real kindness this time. “Poor little Margo. I bet you didn’t know this kind of thing even existed.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Margo said defensively, although she couldn’t help thinking what her father might make of this. Nervously, she fingered the gold-and-pearl pin she’d fastened at the last moment to the strap of her evening dress. It had made her feel better when she was dressing, to think she was going back to Pasadena with a little piece of it still with her; now she was just glad she had something to do with her hands. For the first time, she understood why so many people took up smoking. “I just … well, I just didn’t think I’d ever … you know, meet one in person.”

Jimmy chuckled. “I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you’ve already met about a hundred of them. Show business is crawling with us ‘artistic types,’ I’m afraid.”

“But isn’t it awfully …” Margo searched for the right word. “
Unhealthy
, I guess?”

Jimmy’s smile faded. “I suppose the next thing you’re going to tell me is that I’m going to hell.”

“No! I don’t think that’s for anyone to say!” Margo didn’t know what to say. She supposed she ought to disapprove, or be angry at having been deceived, but Jimmy had never made a secret of the fact that their relationship was more business than pleasure. And what really was so wrong about a man wanting to be with a man, or a woman to be with a woman? She remembered the vague, sinking feeling of entrapment she’d always felt whenever her mother began talking excitedly about her future marriage prospects. The way she felt her heart cracking in two when Mr. Karp had told her she could no longer hope for Dane. How much worse must that be for someone like Jimmy? To feel that not just one person but all of society would never allow you to be with the one you loved? The whole thing seemed about as senseless as keeping Arthur out of the stupid lobby of the hotel. “I just … well, maybe you just haven’t met the right girl,” she finished lamely.

“Margo, I’m a movie star,” Jimmy said. “I could have any girl on the planet if I wanted. The problem is, I don’t.” Finishing his Scotch, he calmly poured himself another. “But look, I have to say, you’re taking this all very well. Like I said, it’s a relief.”

“For me too.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Jimmy said. “And anyway, there’s no reason why we can’t carry on as before.”

“What?” Margo shook her head. “How can we do that?”

Jimmy came to sit beside her on the couch. “Darling, look.
Ninety percent of Hollywood romances are just business anyway, whether the parties go to bed together or not. And we’re doing good business. We’ve got a public profile. We’ve got fans. There’s no need to derail all that. We might as well keep it up. If you want, we can even get married.”

Married?
“Why would I want to do that?”

“The studio would like it, for one. Karp’s made that abundantly clear. It would keep the gossip columnists from breathing down my neck for a while. As for you, well, you could move off the lot, have some space, some privacy. I’m building a big house in Malibu, and I’ve got another one in Beverly Hills. Both of them could use a woman’s touch. And I’d make it worth your while, financially, that is. My lawyers can renegotiate your contract after
The Nine Days’ Queen
comes out, see that on your next picture Karp gives you what you’re worth. And Hollywood’s been good to me over the years. I’ll gladly supplement your salary with a generous allowance. And if there should ever come a time when we agree to … well,
dissolve
our arrangement, I’ll see that you’re well taken care of. In return for your discretion, of course.”

“Of course,” Margo said mechanically. She could hardly believe this was happening.
Our arrangement. Your discretion
. A desert breeze was drifting through the open window. Suddenly, she felt very cold.

As if he could read her mind, Jimmy reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “Look, I know it’s not exactly the proposal that every girl dreams of. And none of this has to be decided now. But believe it or not, I’m fond of you, duchess. I know I haven’t always shown it.…” His eyes wandered toward the closed bedroom door. “But we could be good friends for each
other, if you’d like to try. And in the meantime, I’d be more than happy to let you pursue whatever interests you had on the side. Believe me, I’ll be a hell of a lot easier to get around than Larry Julius, that’s for sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dane Forrest?” Jimmy raised his eyebrows mischievously, and for a moment he looked like his old self. “God knows he’d be a lousy husband. But as a part-time lover? It’s the role he was born to play.”

Margo forced herself to put that thought to the side. Future clandestine meetings with Dane Forrest were the last thing she could think about right now, especially after that scene on the set today. If she started thinking about the mystery of Dane Forrest, not to mention Diana, she might never stop. “I still don’t see what’s in it for you,” she said stubbornly.

“For me? I thought I told you.” Jimmy looked surprised. “I get to keep the thing I love.”

“Roderigo?”

Jimmy chuckled. “Touché.”

“No, I mean, wouldn’t you rather let people know who you really are?”

“But they already do.”

“Jimmy, I’m being serious.”

“So am I,” Jimmy said intently. “Because before I am anything else in the world, before I’m a son or a friend, or a brother or a lover, I am a
performer
. It is the first, last, and only thing I am.”

“But it can’t—”

“Listen to me, Margo.” He leaned in very close to her. His boyish face was as grave as a judge’s. “Some people are in the
business for the cash. I’m not going to name names, but they get addicted to the lifestyle, the luxury, the fame. I don’t care about all that.”

“Neither do I, Ji—”

“It’s different for you,” Jimmy interrupted. “You grew up with money. You don’t care about it because you can’t imagine a world where it doesn’t exist. But my father was a hobo. We used to ride the rails, he and I, and I started singing and dancing so people would throw pennies at us, or pieces of bread. And it turned out I was good at it. Really good. Better than anyone else in the world.”

Jimmy’s face had taken on an almost beatific glow. He looked like one of the angels singing in the painting above the altar in the chapel at Orange Grove. “I dance dances that are created by geniuses, like Tully Toynbee,” he said. “I sing songs written by Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Dorothy Fields: the greatest poets of the modern age. I bring joy to millions of people who have nothing else to be happy about. Men who’ve been out of work so long they don’t feel like men anymore. Women who don’t know how they’re going to put dinner on the table every night. People everywhere, living under the thumb of poverty and oppression. They need me, Margo. There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t sacrifice to keep giving that to them. Nothing I wouldn’t hide.” He put down his glass. “If you want to be a star, a real star, you have to be willing to give up everything else.
Everything
. And anyone who says otherwise doesn’t belong in Hollywood.”

Reaching out to Jimmy, Margo stroked his damp cheek. Smoothing her dress, she stood from the couch and walked to the door. “Then I guess I’d better go back where I belong.”

T
he row of orange trees standing guard along the gravel drive of the Pasadena Country Club was ablaze with tiny balls of lights. Not cheap Christmas-tree strings that came coiled in a box at the five-and-dime, but individual Chinese lanterns no bigger than an infant’s fist, each painted with the initials
DW
entwined in the petals of a miniature orange blossom. Dangling from every glossy green branch like beacons lighting the way for a battalion of fairies, they cast a magical glow on grounds that for Margo were already imbued with a hazy mist of memory.

Here was the lawn where she had spun in circles in her first new party dress, until she’d gotten so dizzy she’d had to lie down behind the bushes. There was where she and Doris had gone sledding on tea trays that one December when Los Angeles had had snow; below it was the pool where they’d eaten countless
club sandwiches and horrified the more old-fashioned members with their newly stylish suntans. Above her head was the flower-bedecked terrace where Phipps McKendrick had pulled her hair during their first cotillion tea, with the long walkway down which she used to dream of gliding on the arm of her beaming father at her own coming-out ball, and at her wedding soon after. The word swam into her mind unbidden, stinging her eyes with tears.
Home
.

In the main ballroom, branches of fragrant mimosa soared from crystal vases encircled in white hyacinths and roses the color of milk. Debutantes in white glided by, their full gowns as silken and bell-shaped as Easter lilies, their slender gloved arms threaded through the white-jacketed elbows of their escorts. Margo had forgotten how clean everything would be, how beautiful, how
pale
. In her crimson velvet, she looked like an unwelcome streak of blood on a white handkerchief.

“Margaret!” Doris came rushing over, an astonished expression on her face. With her white ruffled skirt bobbing along behind her, she looked as though she were poking her small head out of an enormous cake. In her hand she held a wreath of gardenias, waiting to be pinned in place in her hair. “What are you doing here?”

“I wrote to tell you I was coming,” Margo said. Her arms were suspended in midair, as though she were anticipating an embrace. Feeling foolish, she lowered them. This was hardly the warm welcome she’d been expecting. “Didn’t you get my note?”