Chapter 13 1957
When Aria creeps into her aunt’s suite the morning after her sleepover, she finds the pen and paper Doctor Foster left for her. She runs a fingertip over the supreme elegance of Marian Monti’s monogrammed stationery.
One week ago, she could never have imagined she’d be holding in her ordinary hand the personalized stationery of the most famous actress in the country. She feels a thrill—is this how it starts? One piece of star-monogrammed letterhead and soon only immortality will satisfy you.
She picks up the pen. Soon she’s written down everything that’s happened since she arrived, is so engrossed she hardly hears the knock on the suite door or her aunt’s voice.
Then her bedroom door opens.
No good morning, from her aunt. Just the pronouncement, “That was Mr. Mason.”
The hotel manager from last night.
“I was sleepwalking,” Aria tells her aunt.
“You woke an entire floor.” Miss Devine Rey’s enunciation is filmic, her gestures timed to emphasize you and entire. “Mr. Mason has had no choice but to give you a warning. Discretion is what I asked for. Screaming is the opposite of discreet.”
“I thought I saw a ghost…” Aria tries to explain that before last night, stomach-pumping was as alien a concept as women jumping from turrets. But her aunt interrupts.
“Get used to that.” Miss Devine wraps her hands around Aria’s wrists.
“We have no more warnings left. If you put another foot wrong, we’ll both be out on the street, where you really will learn how to scream.
Today’s lesson is to learn to wear an actress’s face while you walk on by all the things that scare you. ”
For the first time since Aria arrived, her aunt has bent down to her eye level. And in Miss Devine’s eyes she sees a soul that isn’t cruel or terrible, but afraid.
And of everything, that is the most terrifying thing she’s seen since she arrived.
Aria’s still in her library at seven that night because inside the volumes of encyclopedias, she can skip over the things that scare her, can turn the page and the Great Fire of London is replaced by Lady Godiva.
The “Naval Observatory to Orleans” volume even has a whole page of optical illusions, and the “Silk, Artificial to Sulphovinic Acid” volume teaches Aria about something called spontaneous human combustion—could she really just catch alight one day?
She jumps when the library door opens. A familiar voice says, “There’s a Golden Mare party on the weekend. They’re paying a hundred and fifty bucks to every girl who goes. Three week’s wages! Beats going to endless auditions and walking away with nothing.”
Calliope’s voice: “We said we’d never do parties. Not after what Daphne said.”
When Aria pops her head over the back of the sofa, Calliope gasps.
“What are you doing here?” Aria asks.
“What are you doing here?” Flitter replies. “Nobody knows about this room.”
“It’s my schoolroom.”
“Then we’d better split. I never met a school I couldn’t fail,” Flitter says.
Aria giggles.
Flitter and Calliope are wearing black skirts, black shirts, and black stockings with a white apron over the top and Aria remembers that they work some nights at the Marmont.
“We sneak in here to take a break from Maisie. We love her, but she is all work and no play.” Calliope kicks off her shoes and collapses onto the sofa beside Aria.
“We’ve been on shift for a half hour, so definitely time for a break.” Flitter grins.
Calliope tosses her shoe at her. “I’m hungover. Even my brain hurts.”
“I’ll cover for you,” Flitter says. “You’ve covered for me. I owe you.”
“The first month we arrived,” Calliope tells Aria, “Flitter discovered gin. That month must have pickled her liver because she never gets hungover now. Which isn’t a goal you should aim for.” She eyeballs Aria, who remembers what Flitter said about Calliope’s dad being a drunk.
After watching Calliope throw up last night, Aria feels very confident when she says, “I won’t ever drink gin or mint juleps.”
“The world has a funny way of turning our won’t evers into just onces and why nots,” Calliope says quietly. “But I admire your resolve.”
“Why do you stay at this hotel?” Aria asks. “Why not someplace else?” Where there are no ghosts, she doesn’t say.
“The Chateau Marmont is where the people who really do matter live,” Flitter says.
“And because every actress has a morality clause in her contract. If they do the wrong thing and it ends up in the papers, they get fired,” Calliope adds.
“But everybody does the wrong thing once in a while. The Marmont is the only place where it stays secret. No cameras permitted. Ever. Staff forbidden to tell.”
“Discreet,” Aria says, testing out the word.
“The motto of the Marmont.” Calliope pulls some sheets of folded paper from her pocket, passes one to Aria, and says, “I need to run lines. Bob’s studio is making a movie and my agent’s got me an audition for the kind of part that has ‘lucky break’ written all over it.”
Calliope clasps her hands and closes her eyes. “I can feel it. My guardian angel is whispering that if I just get this part, my dreams will come true.” She opens her eyes and says to Aria, “You must be my guardian angel because this only happened after you arrived.”
“Tell me about the magic in this one,” Aria says, tucking her legs up beneath her and closing her eyes too, so she can picture it all.
And Aria can almost hear Calliope’s smile dotting all her i’s with sequins when she says, “I’d have to kiss Jimmy McLean in the very last scene. Imagine the two of us, smooching like Scarlett and Rhett. Because oh boy, do I ever need kissing badly.”
Flitter laughs and Aria’s eyes pop open. Calliope might kiss Jimmy McLean!
“You know how they make the kissing noise?” Flitter says. “The Foley sound guy makes out with his arm!”
“Ewwwwww!” Aria gags and Calliope laughs. “It’s true. One of the least magical of all the illusions.”
“Tell you what.” Flitter stands. “You two run lines. I’ll go back out there so Maisie doesn’t hunt us down.”
“I can run lines with you too,” Aria says, like she has any idea what that means.
“I didn’t get an audition, kid. Even more reason to keep my job here.”
“If I get the part, I’ll get you an audition for something,” Calliope says.
Flitter’s almost at the door when she replies, “Favors aren’t power.”
“It’s not a favor if you’re my friend,” Calliope calls.
“That’s not how my dream works,” are Flitter’s last words before she leaves.
“Do anyone’s dreams work out the way we dream they will?” Calliope says to nobody in particular.
“Yes” is Aria’s firm reply. “They do.”