Chapter 25 1957
Aria eventually picks herself up off the floor, goes to her aunt’s suite, and puts herself to bed.
She shoves away the ziiiiiip sound and the noises Bob made and thinks about beaches: blue water, soft sand, sun shining down.
Nothing bad ever happens at the beach, just sunburn, easily fixed with aloe vera.
She falls into an agitated sleep and wakes early on the morning of Calliope’s birthday party.
She should put on her black funeral dress, go down to the library, light the candles, and make sure the pink layer cake with the words Calliope Burns: Star is in the center of the table.
But how will she ever set foot inside that room again?
How will she sit there and not tell Flitter, who drew a beautiful picture inside a book meant to celebrate Calliope’s future?
All Aria wants now is to be like her aunt and never set foot outside this room again.
There’s a knock at the door. Seconds pass. Another knock. Miss Devine must be asleep. Aria will have to see who it is.
She pulls on her robe, trudges to the door. A bellboy hands her a note and she remembers to give him a one-dollar bill from the pile by the door. She’s being so outwardly normal while her insides are scrambled.
The note says, Kid, Calliope got the part! And she got me a part as an extra too. We had to leave early this morning for the studio and we’ll be there until late. Eat the cake. Enjoy!
Aria sees, waiting by the door, the pink layer cake. Whoever delivered it has left a mucky thumbprint marring one of the points of the star.
She steps over the cake, walks into the hall, enters the secret stairwell. She has to yank hard at the door because it’s stuck and won’t let her in. Down five flights of stairs and out onto the driveway. Along the driveway and onto the street.
She’s standing on Sunset Boulevard.
Water touches her face. She looks up. Above her spins a gigantic woman dressed in a leotard, her smile as brilliant as Calliope’s, her blue leotard bleached by the sun.
The water is rain, Aria realizes. She doesn’t think it’s rained the whole time she’s been at the chateau.
But now it’s raining as heavily as one of those Manhattan summer storms that would pour down from a sky that had been bright blue a moment before, magicking up puddles and umbrella hawkers where there’d once been dull concrete and souvenir stands.
Everyone vanishes from the street, jumping into cars and taxis, or entering Schwab’s and Googie’s. Aria doesn’t. A few feet away is a bus stop. She walks toward it—can’t wait here for seven more years, no matter that she has even less in her pockets right now than tissues and candy.
A gust of wind, so strong that it almost blows Aria onto the road, whips up. She stumbles forward. Thunder sounds right behind her. No, not thunder—an earthquake. The ground shakes beneath her feet.
She spins around, can’t make herself believe what she sees.
No earthquake. But the silver dollar the showgirl was holding has fallen down.
Its pieces are spread all over the pavement in jagged shards of plastic, like a thousand silver daggers have been thrown right onto the spot where Aria was standing before the wind blew her forward.
But for the sake of two seconds, she’d have been slaughtered by a lucky silver dollar.
Now she’s running, faster than she’s ever run before. She runs straight back into the Marmont, doesn’t stop until she’s in her bed, sheets pulled up to her chin.
My god, how naive she is. She isn’t even aware of half the dangers in the world, had no idea what men do with the things hiding behind their zippers, could never have comprehended that money, the one thing she wants, could kill you.
If she’d been squashed and taken to a hospital, how would any of the doctors know who to call? Would Flitter or Calliope, busy now with their movie, have realized that Aria was missing or dead? Would her aunt have noticed?
If Aria woke up in a hospital, would she have known what to do—besides calling Schwab’s?
Now she understands why her aunt never leaves. The Marmont will tarnish you, but the world can kill. The Marmont is dangerous, but it is safety too.