Chapter 14 1964 #2
The next person I see is Calliope, exiting Matty’s bungalow.
The orphan drama is gaining momentum and Matty’s attracting a crowd of stars, as well as Hollywood High students who want to be Helen, the other orphan who dies tragically in the first half hour from tuberculosis.
There’s a lot of method acting going on although everyone’s clothes cost more than a real orphan could afford.
“Hey,” I say to Calliope, who starts.
“Aria. I wish you wouldn’t see me every time I’m being my worst self.”
“I thought you were doing what you wanted?”
She stares at the ground, presses a hand to her temple—presses it hard, like that would be a better pain than whatever’s inside her skull. “It isn’t working,” she says.
“What isn’t?”
Her eyes are unfocused and I wonder what she’s taken and how much. I snap my fingers in front of her face. “Calliope?”
Her attention is caught by a girl, in white shorts and a yellow bikini top, who opens the door of Matty’s bungalow and goes inside.
“Matty says I’m too old to be an orphan.
Melissa”—Calliope points to the closed door—“is sixteen. She wants the part the way lionesses want baby gazelles.” Then she looks at me like the Calliope of a few years before.
Ferociously. “But I need that role. Think about how few books or movies have just a woman’s name as the title. ”
“Anna Karenina?” I offer.
“She dies,” Calliope retorts. “Lolita dies. Rebecca dies before the book even starts. Emma is about the only one who lives happily ever after—married, of course. But the men—David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn, Peter Pan—they all live. They have words like adventures beside their names. I need this role in a movie that says to everyone that a woman, just a woman, can be a story. I don’t want people to remember only the madwoman and the brooding hero. I want them to think of her.”
I put my arms around my friend. For the first time, I can almost grasp why Calliope has always chased after her particular and sometimes sordid dream.
The screenwriters are men. The directors are men.
The producers. The agents. But when Calliope Burns strolls onto that screen, she has real power.
For two hours, she is the sun and the moon in a darkened room and people all over the country cheer for her.
They want her to be the one with the happy ever after.
Or they want that for the person she’s pretending to be.
God, what a life.
Into my ear Calliope whispers, “I’m jealous of Flitter.
” She holds on to me as if this confession can only be given in an underbreath and with absolutely no eye contact.
“She’s free now. Doesn’t have to beg for permission from the studio to be loaned out.
To audition for Matty, I had to promise Bronte Bros.
that if I got the part, I’d take a role I’d already rejected in their summer blockbuster.
You know what it is? A woman who gets made over into something ‘better’ by a man—and she ends up marrying that man.
Malleable and marriageable—what more could anyone want? ”
When she pulls back, her casual smile is on her face once more. “Matty says Melissa is too fresh for the part of Jane Eyre,” Calliope goes on. “That he wants to put me and Melissa together, make a blend of our features.”
“You sure he’s not just angling for a threesome?” I joke because my woodpecker is chattering, alerting us that someone is coming, and this is what we do—put on a show: Hollywood Queen and her Devoted Friend.
“I hope Adele is nowhere within earshot of that conversation.”
Win’s voice cuts in. I mouth, Shit, at Calliope. Theo is never here during the day. I turn around with my most innocent expression on my face. “Adele is definitely not here.”
“Then where is she?”
He’s glaring; he’s worried about Adele. I wish Melissa had a grumpy father, wish that I wasn’t thinking of ways to go over to that bungalow and knock on the door and stop her from doing whatever she thinks she wants to do with a man who’s twenty-seven years older than she is.
“Win.” Of all people, Bob appears, clapping Theo on the back and shaking his hand.
“I couldn’t help overhearing. I hope your daughter hasn’t been sneaking out again.
I can help search for her if you like.” Bob looks right at me, his expression deeply concerned.
“Although Aria probably knows better than anyone where she goes at night?”
I want to slap him. He must have seen me and Adele that one time.
It takes every actressy trick I’ve learned over the past seven years to not hyperventilate.
Adele isn’t back yet and what kind of idiot trusts a fourteen-year-old with a rebellious past?
In approximately five minutes, I’ll be sacked, homeless and adrift once again, and Bob will have the revenge he’s always wanted.
Theo is glowering. “Sneaking out again?”
“Adele’s at Schwab’s with a friend from Hollywood High,” I tell him.
“Adele’s at Schwab’s with a friend from Hollywood High,” he repeats. “The same Hollywood High where her friends nearly killed her?”
“There is only one Hollywood High,” I remind him, trying to calm him, and me too; trying to show Bob that every night when I go to bed I don’t remember him saying, I will never forgive you.
“Are you out of your mind?” Theo roars. “And what does Bob mean by ‘sneaking out again’?”
Calliope puts a hand on his arm, but today her magic is definitely fading because when she says, “Win, please be nice to Aria,” he tells her to go to hell.
She does.
“You can leave us to it,” Theo says to Bob. “Thank you.”
Bob once again strolls away from the scene of the crime. At the same time, Melissa exits Matty’s bungalow, bikini top awry.
Maybe it’s watching Melissa do what I don’t want Adele to do, or watching Calliope do what she says she wants but that doesn’t seem to make her happy, or because I’ve never looked after a fourteen-year-old and I’m as scared as Win that I’ve misjudged the situation—but I don’t just tell Win the truth, I throw it at him like a grenade.
“You know what? I can teach Adele math and English, but I can’t protect her every hour of every day.
I have to teach her to learn who to trust. A girl from Hollywood High called and said she was at Schwab’s and she wondered if Adele could join her.
Much to Adele’s mortification, I spoke to this girl too.
Adele said she thinks she’s nice. Schwab’s is a few doors down, it’s broad daylight, and I called ahead and told them to let me know if Adele made any move to leave.
Adele has to be allowed to cross the street and catch a bus and explore the city.
I give you permission to behead me if it all goes wrong.
No, scrap that, I’ll behead myself. But you can’t lock her up here. You can’t—”
Let her be like me. I cut myself off as a voice calls, “I’m back!”
Theo and I whirl around and there she is, back right on time and with chocolate sauce and a smile in the corner of her mouth.
“Why are you yelling at each other?” she asks.
I look at Win. He looks at me.
“Because sometimes I don’t listen,” he tells her. To me he says, “Although you still have some explaining to do.” Then he points at Melissa. “How old is she?”
“Sixteen,” I tell him, shocked that he’s noticed what everyone else ignores.
He strides off in a blaze of black leather and fury. “You can only come back to the Marmont with your guardian,” I hear him tell Melissa.
She turns on the kind of smile Calliope made famous. “You could be my guardian,” she purrs.
I move in front of Adele, who’d probably prefer an alligator ate her right now rather than watch someone only two years older than she is make moves on her dad.
“I’m certain you wouldn’t want that,” Theo says darkly.
He turns away, thinking he’s solved one problem, and says to Adele, his body rigid with tension like he’s trying not to hyperventilate either, “I won’t yell if you explain what Bob meant. Over dinner. Or are you too full of ice cream?”
“I only had two scoops because it was almost dinnertime,” she says and my throat tightens, which is so very stupid. My mom always used to call out to my dad whenever he took me out for ice cream, Make sure she only has two scoops or she’ll never eat her dinner!
Maybe Adele’s mom once told her the same. Maybe she used her own judgment to figure it out. I don’t know. But god, it makes me happy.
I turn, ready to leave Theo and Adele to their dinner, but he says, “Where are you going?”
To my room, to the turret—my list of destinations is predictable and small. I shrug.
“I mean,” he amends, “please join us for dinner. I’m serving food and apologies.”
“And you want me to serve up explanations?”
“No. I’ll take your advice and trust Adele to do that.” He smiles at me.
That smile reaches up to the creases around his eyes and into his eyes too, and now he’s a rock god and I’m a weak-kneed groupie who ought to know better than to let her stomach clench at the sight of a set of hot lips curving up into a well-practiced smile.
I give myself some fast internal monologue: Flitter said hot voice and cool lips, and that is—perhaps only slightly—a more appropriate way for Aria Jones to think of her boss.
Of course I agree to dinner.