Chapter 7 1957
Aria shuts the door on Miss Devine’s maxims and the knowledge that on any previous Thursday at nine in the morning, she’d be walking into her classroom at Joan of Arc Junior High giggling over Hilary’s or Katie’s attempts to sew herself into her flannel skirt, attempts that usually ended with gaping holes or oxygen deprivation.
She strokes the giraffe—could it actually be real?
—pokes the waxy hand with a suspicious finger in case it suddenly comes to life, then pulls books from the shelves: The Miracle of the Movies, issues of U.S.
Camera Magazine, and issues of Photoplay magazine.
Her goal for this week is to understand both how to use the RCA Sound Camera and her new world.
Otherwise she’ll suffer a similar fate to Eggletina Clock in The Borrowers, who was eaten up by the cat.
Hours pass. Hours of looking at her aunt’s smiling face on cover after cover of Photoplay, of reading interviews that detail her aunt’s beauty tricks, her worst fault—daydreaming, apparently, although Aria can’t imagine Miss Devine Rey doing anything so childish; that’s Aria’s domain—and, bizarrely, her thoughts on bats.
There are also photographs of a beaming Miss Devine Rey embracing Bob Ashenhurst, the man from the pool—the King of Hollywood. There are questions about weddings and babies.
But in the space of one issue to the next—as if a decade had passed rather than a month—Miss Devine Rey is no longer kind, beautiful, or glamorous. She’s a lush. Immoral. She fooled the people of America into believing she was an angel.
Aria searches for clues about how this transformation happened, but there are none. She selects two magazines, one from before and one from after. Then she creeps through the hallways of the Marmont searching for Flitter and Calliope, who are out by the pool.
Calliope’s wearing a red-and-white polka-dot bikini, and is surrounded by men. Flitter, in a blush pink one-piece, stands outside the circle.
Aria lifts her hand into a half wave, something she can pretend not to have done if the women ignore her.
But Calliope waves back in a rainbow arc and says to the people around her, “It’s been a pleasure, gentlemen.
” Her voice is husky, and for the five seconds it takes to say those words, Calliope is someone else entirely.
“Later,” Flitter says.
Nobody replies. Aria wonders how Flitter feels every time she walks into a room with her friend. Maybe like Aria felt when Katie and Hilary forgot to invite her to a sleepover.
But Flitter is smiling at Aria now. “We were worried The-Legendary-Miss-Devine-Rey had eaten you.”
Aria giggles and holds up her magazines. “Nope. But I have questions.”
Flitter shakes her head. “Sorry, kid. We’ve got a party to go to.”
Aria’s about to beg, not caring if she lets these two see her soul in her eyes, when Calliope says, “Maybe we both need a real night off. We have the night off work here. But what if we take a night off from being Flitter and Calliope too?”
Flitter studies her friend. Now Aria would recognize the single fine line of fatigue that isn’t quite hidden by the pan stick foundation on Calliope’s face as a warning sign.
Back then, Aria has no idea what she’s looking at.
Perhaps Flitter does; perhaps Flitter doesn’t—it’s a question Aria will turn over in the years to come.
Flitter nods. “We’ll start on the roof.”
“Can we go up to the turret?” Aria asks as they cross over the driveway, enter a secret staircase on the ground floor, and ascend.
Flitter demurs. “Never go up to the turret.”
“Why?”
“It’s haunted,” Calliope says thrillingly.
“By who?”
“Bob Ashenhurst’s sister.”
Aria is shocked into silence. The man who made time to smile at everyone by the pool had a sister whose ghost haunts the fairy-tale turret above them?
Calliope pulls open a door and they’re blinded by sunshine.
When her eyes adjust, Aria sees they’re at the top of a small tower next to and lower than the turret.
Below them, Los Angeles sprawls without inhibition, so different from Manhattan, which is all sharp skyscrapers you can’t see past. Here, a giantess in a blue leotard spins on a silver dollar beside them, and for a moment, Aria thinks she can hear the hum of the hotel breathing.
She strokes her hand along the balustrade of this marvelous creature she’s standing atop, a bareback rider poised on a golden Palomino horse.
“Over there is Millennium Wolf, to the left is Bronte Bros., down there aways is Supreme Pictures.” Flitter points to buildings in the center of it all.
“Just past that is ACE Studios, and in the middle of it all is Golden Mare. The big five Hollywood studios. They own this town and every actor and actress in it—if you’re lucky enough to be under contract to one of them.
Me and Calliope would give just about everything we have to sign a contract with one. ”
“It’s the first step to becoming a star.” Calliope throws her arms into the air and stands, legs akimbo, mimicking the points of that celestial body. “Bob Ashenhurst is the boss of Golden Mare, the biggest of the big five. That’s why he’s the king.”
“And because he remembers everyone’s name, and he isn’t just a dreamboat—he’s like a fantasy ocean liner.” Flitter grins.
“Oh my.” Calliope fans herself.
Aria holds up Miss Devine Rey and Bob Ashenhurst on the cover of Photoplay. “Is she famous?”
“Your aunt was a once-in-a-lifetime star,” Calliope says with such longing it’s like you could wring out her words and find the sweet nectar that dreams are made of.
“I saw my first Miss Devine Rey movie when I was five—far too young, but my parents’ attitude to children was about as careless as your aunt’s. I wanted to be her so bad.”
“After Calliope saw that movie,” Flitter picks up the story, “it was like she’d found the meaning of life. She snuck me into the movie theater—her parents owned the place—and I fell just as much in love.”
“Why haven’t I heard of her?” Aria asks, enchanted by the idea of her aunt wielding that kind of magic—that just by watching her, you’d want to be her.
“She hasn’t been in a movie since 1950,” Calliope says.
“Why?”
“Nobody really knows.” Flitter shrugs.
Calliope’s French-manicured fingernail traces over the photo of Miss Devine Rey and Bob Ashenhurst smooching. “They were engaged. Imagine being the Queen of Hollywood.”
“I’d give just about anything for that,” Flitter says and her tone is yearning too.
Which makes as much sense to Aria as the reasons why her cameras are now shards of glass. “I don’t understand!” she protests.
In the September sunshine, her neck is sticky with sweat; she’s tired and hungry, and the only thing she wants is the one thing she can’t have: to go to Jan’s ice cream parlor with her mother and sit at the counter and order banana splits while her mom explains the world to her.
Calliope puts her hand on Aria’s cheek. Aria wants so much to nuzzle into it like a kitten casting around for just one scratch under her chin.
But she can’t afford to frighten away these two women, can’t be childish or needy or forlorn.
Can’t be thirteen. Can’t show her soul in her eyes.
Can’t get a warning. Can’t understand—but needs to.
“Back in the day when your aunt was famous, Bob owned a smaller studio,” Calliope tells her. “He broke off his engagement to Miss Devine around the same time he bought out Golden Mare. I don’t know why. But you look cold. Come on, we’ll show you our room.”
Yes. Seeing where these two live, what posters they hang on their walls, whether their dressing table holds barrettes or bandanas, sounds like something Aria can comprehend.
They descend to the first floor and in they all go, squeezing around the door that, yes, you can’t open all the way without hitting the bed.
Lipstick-stained glasses, balled-up Kleenex, still-wet bikinis, hair curlers, negligees, stockings, and a paperback novel called Lolita cover the floor.
Through the middle is a path that leads to the bathroom, with one branch shooting off to the bed and another to a brown dresser that looms like a bear in the corner.
“Home sweet home,” Flitter says.
She and Calliope start tugging off their swimsuits. Aria whirls away, cheeks crimson.
“Look at her—face like a Russian flag.” Flitter grins.
“Doesn’t she remind you of us, once upon a time?” Calliope says wistfully.
“Us before the fairies died, you mean.” Flitter’s laugh is sharp, humorless.
“What does that mean?” Aria peeps over her shoulder.
Calliope’s smile is a quarter-strength. “Just that we’d like to make sure you still blush when you see a naked person in a year’s time.”
“Aria reminds you of me,” Flitter interjects. “Not you. Nobody’s ever had your glitter, Cally-o-pee.”
“Have you always looked like that?” Aria asks, happy to shift the conversation to something less foreign than fairies and nudity.
“Calliope’s always been a traffic-stopper, jaw-dropper, gobsmacker, eye-popper,” Flitter replies.
Aria giggles, but Calliope says glumly, “ ‘Miss Most Likely to Succeed,’ my school yearbook says. This week, you wouldn’t know it.”
She slumps on the bed. Flitter sits on one side, Aria the other, and their arms wind around Calliope.
“Another failed audition,” Flitter explains.
Aria tries to hold in her next question, but she hasn’t spoken to anybody since breakfast and a whole day is a long time to stay silent. “If Calliope was Miss Most Likely to Succeed, what were you?”
“The girl whose hopes were the only things higher than her skirt,” Flitter wisecracks, pulling up her miniskirt, making Aria and Calliope laugh.
Calliope leaps up. “Let’s have a pajama party.”
“Well, if we can’t go out and get screwed, blued, and tattooed, then let’s have ourselves a pajama party,” Flitter says.
When Aria replies, “I don’t know what that means, but I think a pajama party is safer,” Calliope says, “See, you’re getting the hang of Hollywood already.
” She picks up the phone and orders three burgers with fries, one mint julep, and two lemonades from Schwab’s.
Before she hangs up, she says, “Screw it. Make it four mint juleps and one lemonade.”
Flitter raises an eyebrow. “We’d better answer your questions now, Aria. Because soon Calliope will either be snoring or dancing. Two mint juleps for someone who doesn’t drink is going to be either a pick-me-upper or put-me-downer.”
“Should I tell my aunt where I am?” Aria asks.
“I don’t think she’ll remember that you’re not there.” Calliope squeezes Aria’s hand.
Aria stares. Her mother always knew where she was. But Aria’s mother will never again know where she is, a thought she shoves down beside everything else that makes the vomity feeling come back. “Tell me about the ghost,” she blurts.
“I don’t know—” Calliope starts.
Flitter interrupts. “She’ll find out soon enough. You know the way stories travel like herpes through here.” Flitter whacks a hand over her mouth. “Shit.” Then she claps the other hand on top and breaks into giggles.
And over the top of that incongruous melody, Calliope says, “Bob Ashenhurst’s sister jumped from the turret seven years ago.”