Chapter 15 1957
It isn’t long before Aria understands truly why Calliope and Flitter stay at the Chateau Marmont.
On her way to the library each day, she sees Chester Meringue trying to lasso the gothic chandelier—he lassoed Aria instead and made her laugh.
Sometimes he even lines her up in the hallway and tosses trick knives at her.
In the lobby, there’s always someone famous sitting at the baby grand and Aria’s feet tap along to the music.
Elsewhere, people gather in rooms practicing lines—declaring undying love or readying their pistols, depending on the movie.
Writers tap feverishly on typewriters, directors talk about aerial shots and anti-heroes.
Through it all parade the starlets like Calliope and Flitter—the ones who want—and the stars like Judith Crown and Marian Monti—the ones who have.
In between reading encyclopedias, Aria applies the inherent creativity of the Chateau Marmont to her own problems: How exactly can a nearly fourteen-year-old orphan earn enough money to get herself to Hawaii and still have enough left over for burgers and ice cream, a house by the sea, a swimsuit, and maybe even some false eyelashes?
The lawyer in Manhattan said her aunt was her guardian until she was twenty-one.
So that’s her deadline. She won’t stay here a day beyond her twenty-first birthday, which is seven years away—half the time she’s been on earth.
But she’ll probably need all of that if she wants to gather enough money to never again be owned by someone who doesn’t love her; to find that house by the sea where Aria Jones belongs.
Aria hasn’t found any answers in her encyclopedias yet. And now her stomach is grumbling. It’s ten after five, so she’s allowed back to the suite where the first thing that hits her is the smell. Deviled eggs, shrimp cocktail, and a giant fondue she could just about drink.
“Who’s it for?” Aria asks, reaching for the bowl of what she assumes are candies, only to have her hand slapped by her aunt.
“Stick to the fondue,” Miss Devine says. “I have a soiree on the last Friday each month.”
Soon the room is full of people. Aria’s aunt sits on her chair by the window, dressed for a party she’s ten years too late for in a fox-fur stole and sleek gown, a sculptural iris in a garden of blousy roses.
Few people speak to her, Aria observes from her place by the curtains; they incline their heads, then help themselves to her drinks and candies.
But when Bob walks in, he makes his way straight to Miss Devine Rey, picks up her hand, kisses it like a gallant knight.
“Oh, he’s just too kind,” one of the starlets enthuses, and others nod their heads and tell about some other kindness Bob offered to them when they first arrived, like the way he defended Aria from that man who called her a beast.
He moves through the crowd, nodding and saying everyone’s name, even Aria’s, and she smiles eagerly at this man who greets her despite her being merely ordinary.
She was definitely dreaming the other night. Bob is the least scary thing here.
The next person to enter the room is Judith Crown, carrying a baby dressed in a miniature version of Judith’s own gown.
Her husband, an actor of almost the same stature, is by their side.
The starlets move as one over to Judith, squeezing the baby’s cheeks like they’re ketchup bottles. It starts to bellow.
Judith says a bewildered, “Oh dear.”
That’s when Aria has her idea. In Manhattan, she used to run down to Apartment 12 to help Mrs. Goldsworthy with her dear baby, who always settled for Aria.
She dashes forward, almost unable to believe that she, plain Aria Jones, is about to offer assistance to the celebrated Judith Crown. “Let me help.”
She takes the baby from Judith, pops her finger in its mouth, letting it suck, and moves away from the excited chatter of hellos by the door.
“You’re a treasure!” Judith exclaims, which is almost the best praise Aria has ever received. “Look, Max, isn’t she a treasure?”
Her husband, who’s eyeing the bowl of candies, says, “I told you that you don’t bring babies to the Marmont. It’s not like the Roosevelt. No bar. No restaurant. No damn babysitting services.”
“I’m the new sitter,” Aria says. “I charge one dollar per hour.”
Max pulls out his wallet. “Here’s a dollar. Now I can get a drink.”
“Aria Jones’s Sitting Service will take care of everything,” Aria says, using a voice like she’s heard on radio advertisements, sing-song, persuasive.
Her eyes lock with her aunt’s and she thinks she sees Miss Devine Rey wink at her.
Did she just get her aunt’s blessing? And is she really holding Judith Crown’s money in her own insignificant hand?
When Judith comes to find her later, Aria’s ordered formula from Schwab’s, wrapped the baby in a blanket, and taken it out onto the terrace where it’s quieter.
Judith pushes a whole ten-dollar bill Aria’s way and Aria walks back into the party with her whole happiness on her face.
At the same moment, Calliope enters the suite, not with red-painted lips and hair sprayed stiff, not with her cleavage making its own entrance one foot in front of her.
Calliope’s hair floats in soft, blond waves.
Her lips are pale pink and her pink halter-neck sundress shows off the tanned skin of her back.
Aria is witness to the moment when gravity shifts, pulling everyone in the room not down to the earth, but toward Calliope.
But instead of milling around the studio executives like the other starlets, Calliope heads straight for Aria, taking her hand and leading her into her room.
“How about a story?” Calliope pats the bed. “I always liked it when I was real small and my mama sometimes told me a story at bedtime.”
The words real small and sometimes are heavy with longing, as if Calliope’s mama only did this ordinary thing once or twice.
But Aria has questions, of course. “Why does my aunt have these parties?” she asks. “She isn’t talking to anyone.”
“Well, at most of her parties, a deal is done—a role in a movie won, an idea green-lit, a couple introduced to one another. Every time the story is told of how so-and-so came to star in such-and-such a movie, or how Mr. X met Miss Y, it begins: It was at one of Miss Devine Rey’s Friday soirees. So Miss Devine lives on, still famous.”
“But why doesn’t she just act in another movie?”
Calliope shakes her head. “I don’t know.
But what I do know is that I need to go out there and talk to Bob.
Make a good impression before my audition next week.
” She reaches down, smooths Aria’s quilt, tidies the pile of books on the nightstand.
“I quit my job this morning. If I’m working, I can never get to these parties.
Desperate people do desperate things, is the saying, but maybe desperate people do courageous things. Do you think?”
For the first time ever, Calliope’s voice is not filled with certainty. And Aria remembers that while Calliope has a mother still living, she’s a long way from home. That she’s only four years older than Aria. Yet she’s asking Aria, who knows nothing, for advice.
Aria hesitates. One percent of her still clings on to what she thinks she saw, doesn’t believe it was an illusion.
And that small but insistent part of her makes her whisper, “I thought I saw Bob in the hallway a while back. He was carrying a woman. It looked like…” She stops.
What did it look like? The only word she can think of is wrong.
She searches the air for explanations, catches Bob watching them from his circle in the living room. He does nothing except send another leading man smile their way, but Aria still gets up and closes her bedroom door.
“She was probably drunk,” Calliope says. “He was probably helping her.”
Which makes more sense than Aria’s story.
Calliope stands. “I’m going to have a rent problem in a fortnight unless I get out there and show them what I’ve got. Tell me to break a leg.”
“Break both legs,” Aria says.
Soon, she’s asleep inside a chateau that’s been standing for twenty-eight years, a chateau that knows that seven is just a word and that time is not exact and some years will take mere seconds and others will take all of your youth.
That, sooner than it’s wanted, a future is coming when Aria will understand all too well how desperate you can be when it comes to getting what you want.