Chapter 8 1964 #3
Adele and I move to the top step of the pool at the same time as Calliope steps out of Matty’s bungalow.
She’s blurry and half asleep, dressed in tiny shorts and a bikini top.
The bungalow has lately been visited by an increasing number of stars and starlets all wanting a part in the movie Matty hasn’t even finished writing.
He’s won a Best Director Oscar and probably has the credentials to get Calliope the Academy Award that she wants.
I just wish she didn’t have to do an overnight audition to get it.
Calliope rubs her eyes and reaches for the cigarettes on Matty’s cabana. Beside me, Adele’s eyes are in danger of becoming permanently crossed with the speed at which they’re changing direction. “Calliope Burns?” she says. “Oh my god, Calliope Burns!”
“Hey,” Calliope says. Then she sees me and her face breaks into a smile. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite person.”
“Last night you said that was me,” Matty grouses.
“Calliope, this is Adele Winchester.” I do the introductions, but I’m distracted by the sight of two men hauling a leopard-print sofa up the long hill to bungalow four. The renovations must be going well if they’re replacing the furniture already.
“Is your bungalow getting a facelift too?” I ask Matty.
“Nope. I told Win I can’t move until I’ve made this damn movie and he told me it’s just Bob’s that’s getting its wrinkles smoothed.”
The crash of glass breaking makes us all turn.
The man on the other cabana has woken, stretched, and a highball has lost its inevitably short life in the process. Calliope grimaces when she sees him, then walks away in the direction of the main building. Not before the highball killer sees her and tries to push the half-naked girl off him.
“Another day in paradise,” I say to Adele, who follows me deeper into the water, asking, “Are you friends with Calliope Burns? Really?”
“You say that like it’s the equivalent of me being friends with God.”
“Well, you’re not exactly anyone. Although everyone here seems to know you.”
“I’ve been around a while, that’s all.” I dive underwater to stop the stupid sting in my eyes. Even after all these years, I’m still just plain, nobody Aria.
When I resurface, the cabana-boy is stumbling after Calliope, the semi-naked girl falls back to sleep, and Matty keeps writing words for a story where orphans are second chances, rather than a first chance truncated.
A housemaid delivers a note from Win to the pool to say that the penthouse is a chaos of staff and Adele should get ready in my room. He’s sent something for her to wear.
She looks horrified. “Do you think he bought me a kid’s dress?”
I refrain from telling her that she is a kid. “If it’s hideous, you can borrow something of mine. Hopefully it won’t be too short.”
Like most people, Adele has at least three inches on me. But when we get to my room, there’s a yellow-and-white-striped box from Giorgio Beverly Hills and inside it is a mini dress in a perfect golden-yellow color. It isn’t too young nor too old, but just right.
She beams. “Maybe having a dad isn’t so bad after all.”
I wince. And I hope Win doesn’t think that he’ll break through his daughter’s facade of grumpy indifference by buying her things. I really do need to talk to him tonight.
Half an hour later, Adele emerges from my bathroom in a halo of steam, eyebrows decidedly more arched than when she went in, dress on, hair pushed back off her face with a black headband. “Can I use your makeup?”
I consider. “I have some Tangee Natural and Maybelline in the top drawer. You can wear that. I need to chat to your dad about the rules.”
“If you don’t know, then you can’t get in trouble,” she wheedles.
“I told your dad I was a genius. Letting you go to a Hollywood party with a face full of makeup would prove otherwise. Besides, you’re beautiful. You don’t need more than lipstick and mascara.”
She pouts, but sits down at the dresser.
I take my turn in the bathroom, hoping that shower steam can work some kind of zoetrope miracle and make me at least average by the time I step out.
If Adele or Win overhear anyone make one of those Beauty and the Beast comments while I’m talking to Calliope tonight, I’ll lose the tentative respect Adele’s granted me, and maybe my job too.
With no transformation achieved, I rummage through my clothes rack, searching for magic.
I find a deep green dress with a square neckline and belted waist that Judith Crown gave me one time in lieu of babysitting money.
It’s very fitted, but some kind of strange evolutionary effect of the environment means I now have copybook Hollywood curves.
When I look in the mirror, my eyes are traffic-light green.
Because maybe there’s a part of me that wants more than I’ve let myself have since the night six years ago when I took my vow of hiding away as much as possible.
A part of me that looks at fourteen-year-old Adele and says, Fourteen-year-olds are meant to go to parties dressed in mini dresses and anticipation, not be investigating things that go bump in the night, then calling Doctor Foster for help.
But wanting more is terrifying. Wanting more is why starlets are found comatose beside swimming pools.
I shut my eyes. Blink my lids open.
My eyes are still green and exhilarated.
“Let’s go to a party,” I say.