Chapter 5 1957
Aria wakes the next day to the awareness that someone is watching her.
“Get up and get dressed and we’ll discuss how to make this arrangement work.” Her aunt’s voice isn’t cruel, but impatient.
Aria scrambles out of bed, washes her puffy face, puts on her black dress, and brushes her knotted hair.
Then she steps into the main room where the windows are covered in gauzy drapes that permit only filtered light, and the walls are hung with movie posters.
In each of them, Miss Devine Rey is caged in the arms of a man.
“Flitter said you were the Legendary Miss Devine Rey,” Aria says, curiosity and a good night’s sleep overcoming her anger.
Her aunt smiles and she’s transformed into the woman who glows like the moon in every poster.
“Of course. Why else would I be here?” Miss Devine spreads her arms wide, indicating the hotel.
“They do let painters, singers, and poets through the doors, but that always ends in tears. Too many women want to be the subject of a sonnet or immortalized like Madame X. Fights ensue. Most of the guests at the Chateau Marmont are actors and actresses, producers and directors.”
“What should I call you? And where will I go to school?” Aria asks, desperate for a sensible, practical soul in the form of a teacher to enter this scene rather than someone like Calliope, Flitter, or Miss Devine, people whose very names indicate their fleeting acquaintance with solid ground.
“This, Aria”—Miss Devine waves an actressy hand around her again—“is your school. You’ll never learn more about the world than you will at the Marmont.
You will call me Miss Devine Rey like everyone else.
And you will be discreet at all times. The minute you cross the threshold of the Chateau Marmont, you sign the contract—kiss and never tell.
These”—she walks into Aria’s room and pulls out of the opened suitcase two cameras that belonged to her father—“have to go. No photography allowed.”
One by one, the cameras tumble into the trash can, dropped from such a height that the lenses let out little screams as they shatter.
“No! They’re mine!” Aria rushes forward but her aunt grabs her wrists, stopping her, and in her eyes Aria can see things that remind her of something her mother always told her: There are no mean people in the world, just hurt people.
“One warning stands between us and the prospect of having to find a new home, Aria. Those cameras of yours will earn us a warning. Trouble is, I used up my one warning years ago. Like I said, the Marmont is your school. It’s time to learn your lesson.”
Aria opens her mouth to protest that she’s only thirteen.
She doesn’t know anything about contracts or who Madame X is.
But the straight, unembraceable line of her aunt’s back tells Aria that her age is her own problem.
While her friends Hilary and Katie are probably sitting on the floor of Katie’s room sticking eyes into Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, the fire at the gas station has incinerated Aria’s childhood.
“I have learned my lesson,” Aria says fiercely. “There’s nothing you can’t lose.”
“Well done,” Miss Devine says, her praise as sincere as Aria’s teacher’s when she gave Aria a gold sticker for a story she wrote. Her aunt picks up the telephone. “We’ll have breakfast. Then I have a surprise for you. One that I think you’ll like.”
Aria isn’t so sure about that.
A hot dog and Coke arrive for Aria’s breakfast. “Call Schwab’s to get food sent over,” Miss Devine Rey explains as Aria tears off a bite.
“The garage boys can get anything else you need. And absent yourself from the suite between one and five each day so that your presence doesn’t crush me the way it’s crushing my evening dresses, which I’ve had to rehouse in my wardrobe now you’ve taken over the spare bedroom. ”
Then her aunt smiles, whiplashing Aria with the speed at which her moods change. Now it’s like being caught in what you thought was a shower of rain only to find sunbeams falling down on you instead.
“Come, Aria,” Miss Devine says. “Your surprise awaits.”
Aria scoops up her Coke, shoves the hot dog into her mouth, and follows her aunt to the elevator.
Inside is Judith Crown—the second biggest star in the world after Marian Monti.
Miss Devine and Judith embrace, then Judith bends down to pat Aria’s cheek before waltzing out on the third floor with so many sparkling rings on her fingers she could be an entire galaxy.
Aria’s not quite recovered from that when her aunt exits the elevator on the first floor, opens a door, and Aria finds the magic promised by the castle’s facade.
A library. Shelves full of books. A red sofa any actress would love to recline on.
A leather chair. A stuffed giraffe, a cardboard replica of Venice, a lamp whose base is a foot in a high-heeled shoe, a wax hand with red-painted nails, a black cat statue, a camera.
And not just any camera—an RCA Sound Camera, something her father had always wanted to own.
The air is stale, the curtains drawn, the dust ought to be accruing a bill for its domicile, but Aria doesn’t care. This room is hers.
“Your schoolroom,” Miss Devine says. “Educate yourself.”
“Thank you,” Aria says fervently.
Her aunt tilts Aria’s smiling face up to hers. “Never let them see your soul in your eyes. Keep it hidden unless you want to have it taken from you.”