Chapter 26 1964
The door of the turret bursts open. Holy shit! Why at the most crucial junctures of my life does someone burst into the turret? It’s not Flitter this time, it’s Doctor Foster. Theo’s hand drops to his side and suddenly we’re standing a foot apart.
“It’s your aunt,” Doctor Foster says.
“You’re wet. You need to change,” I tell Theo so he won’t come along and see whatever mess needs to be cleaned up now.
Then I hurry down the stairs with the doctor, who says, “It’s good news.
A place came up at one of the best rehab facilities in California.
But they’ve got a waiting list longer than Judith Crown’s career.
If we don’t take the place by morning, they’ll give it to someone else. I need to leave now to get her there.”
“Have you told her?” There’s nothing I want less than to be the one to break the news to Miss Devine Rey that there’ll be no more reds, no more smack, no more booze.
He nods and it doesn’t take any smarts at all to interpret the look on his face: it didn’t go well.
Inside the suite, Miss Devine Rey is propped on the couch.
Her eyes land on me—two furious little grenades about to explode.
But I don’t know what it is—perhaps it’s the incomprehensible scenes from tonight’s party where everyone I thought I knew has behaved in ways I’d never have expected—but I don’t shrink back from what I think I’m seeing.
Instead I wonder, am I misreading my aunt too?
Maybe she doesn’t look angry. Maybe she looks afraid.
Going to rehab means going outside the Marmont. When I left safety and familiarity behind seven years ago, my response had been to hide fear behind fury too.
I sit down and take her hand. “Matty Tamer is directing a movie about an orphan. Jane Eyre. There’s a character in it, a housekeeper—she tries to warn the orphan. I think you could get the role, once you’re better.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” she whines.
“If you do, then you can come back to a role made for you—you were the one who warned this orphan.” I point to myself.
I have no idea if she’ll ever be able to act again, or if Matty would even consider her for a part.
But if my aunt goes to rehab with only her past to hold on to, she won’t survive.
I keep my eyes fixed on hers, trying to make her recall that she’s connected to me and to movies, for better or worse, and to a future that hangs in the sky like either a guillotine or a star.
I need to know that people can leave here. That in this room in twenty years’ time, it won’t be me prostrate on the couch. Or Flitter. Or Calliope.
She stares at me and I let her see it, my soul.
Then she reaches inside her neckline and pulls out a small brass key. She tugs it off the chain and puts it in my hand. “The turret,” she whispers. Her eyes close.
I grab her hand. “You can’t go to sleep yet. What’s the key for?”
“Sorry, Aria,” Dr. Foster says. “I gave her a sedative for the journey. You won’t be able to wake her.”
Dammit. I close my fist around the key. I’ll find what it opens if it’s the last thing I do.
I pass the doctor my money. “Tell me when you need more. I’ll get it somehow.”
Then I kiss my aunt’s forehead and hope she can hear me when I say, “Legends only exist because people believe in them. Once you’re better, make everyone believe in the legend again.”
In the turret, I search for anything with a keyhole, pull clocks and music boxes from the shelves. Examine a writing desk. The jewelry cases. I find the one with the owl ring inside it and hope surges through me.
I empty it of its contents, pull out the lining, shake it until the lid falls off. But there’s nothing. The key my aunt gave me doesn’t fit any of the locks.
I curse, cast my eyes over the floor, make sure I haven’t missed anything. There’s stuff everywhere. I need to clean it up before I collect Adele or she’ll think I’ve gone mad.
I move as fast as I can, but it’s morning by the time I finish. I end up scooping up the last few items and shoving them onto a shelf before hurrying down to my room to change—no governess turns up for school in the clothes she wore to the party the night before.
I halt in the corridor. The door to my room is wide open.
“Hello?” I whisper.
No reply.
I creep forward, trying to convince myself that Calliope and Flitter will be inside. They’ll apologize and we’ll hug and everything will be all right.
I reach the doorway. Peer in.
Nothing.
“Hello?” I repeat.
There’s no one there.
I no longer care that I’m still wearing my dress from the night before. All I can think of are screams and fires and the laughter that cackled outside my door. Now somebody’s broken in.
I run to the front desk, panting by the time I get there. What if I’d been in my room when whoever it was got inside?
“Are you okay?” John the desk clerk asks.
“Someone broke into my room,” I huff.
“You sure?” John asks. “I hear you went kind of crazy last night. Maybe you’re imagining things?”
“I went crazy? What about Flitter?”
“Yeah, I hear she put on a real show. Might get that part everyone wants.”
How is this the narrative that’s come out of last night? That I’m mad and Flitter’s a hero?
John pushes over a box. “Bob was real worried about you. He got you these. Always looking out for everyone. Gave me a proper gold cigarette lighter for my last birthday.”
Bob’s left me a box of Quaaludes.
To calm the agitated mind of the girl whose aunt relies on the stuff, the girl who screamed at her friend by the pool last night, the girl who’s just burst into the lobby like she’s a lunatic.
I close my fist around the box. Put on my sensible-Aria face. “Tell Bob I said thank you. And don’t worry about the door. It was probably nothing.”
I will never forgive you, Bob had said to me six years ago. I have a terrible feeling he’s about to prove it—and I’m walking right into his trap.
I arrive at the Winchester penthouse more than an hour late, knowing I’m going to be very lucky if I’m not fired on the spot, let alone see the Theo who told me I had beautiful green eyes. Right now, it seems impossible that it really happened.
“I’m sorr—”
Theo and Adele are sitting side by side on the couch, both of them with guitars on their laps.
“I’m having a lesson. I figured he”—Adele grins at her father—“would be a better teacher than you for this.”
“Great,” I say, daring to glance at Theo, who gives a shrug that has so many possible meanings: Hey, look at me being a dad. Or, Last night we were all a bit overwrought. Or, I’d rather it was you on my lap, not my guitar.
I blink, hoping nobody saw that bit of my overwrought soul in my eyes.
“Take a half hour off,” Theo says. “I might as well finish this.”
I make myself behave like the Aria they expect. “Well, in a half hour, I’m expecting either a knockout song or that Adele will have knocked you out.” I nod at Theo. “Hopefully creative genius will beat out your creative temperaments.”
Adele laughs. And Theo smiles at me. “If you see Pilot, send him up,” he says. “Adele let him out two hours ago.”
I take my mixed-up head to the grove where my little woodpecker lives. If I sit down among the frangipani and jasmine, I’ll stop thinking about Calliope and Flitter and my aunt and Bob and Theo. I’ll take a deep breath and relax.
Normally my approach is enough for the woodpecker to peep out. But there’s no movement. I unwrap the suet I collected on my way here and lean in, searching.
“Oh no.” I drop to my knees in the dirt. “No, no, no.”
On the ground is a tiny mound of brown feathers ringed with red.
My little bird is dead.
I scrub my face with my hand. How silly to cry. It was just a bird. Maybe it’s free now, ghost wings flying away from this place it got trapped in because it had only one leg.
I push back onto my heels, swipe my face again. Something clatters.
Pilot’s water bowl. What’s that doing out here?
The color of the liquid inside the bowl arrests me. Creamy yellow. I sniff. Coconut and rum.
Someone’s put pina colada in Pilot’s water bowl.
Bang!
I gasp-scream.
The door of the bungalow behind the Keep Out! sign just slammed shut.
But I don’t care about that now. Dogs can’t metabolize alcohol.
I tear through the garden, climb the Marmont’s throat, let myself get spat out on the top floor.
Inside the penthouse, Theo and Adele are on their knees, crouched over something.
No, no, no.
“Is…Pilot…” I gasp.
Adele turns around, face streaked with tears. Dr. Foster is there too.
He says, very soberly, “Thankfully he’ll be all right.”
I close my eyes. Bend over. Thank god.
“What happened?” I sink onto the couch.
“A stupid party trick,” Theo says grimly. “It was a pretty wild night.”
His eyes brush over my face, then drop back down to Pilot. He runs one hand along Pilot’s side, up and back, speaking in a low voice to his dog, his tone the same one I use with the starlets in the turret—a low musical thrum tuned to the key of comfort.
“Why was it wild?” Adele asks, sitting on the ground beside her dad.
She looks frightened and small. I try to lighten the mood. “Well, a fortune-teller said your dad was going to marry Flitter.”
“Oh, she’s so pretty,” Adele says. Then she frowns. “Would she be a good mom?”
Theo manages a laugh. “That’s one role she won’t be auditioning for.”
Relief. He sounds so certain. But I defend my friend. “She was a good mom to me,” I say. It’s the truth. She was. But now? Since being dropped by her studio, Flitter’s become the kind of woman who’d make her friends think she was on fire just to get a part in a movie.
Fire. Screams. A laugh outside my door. Pilot. My bird. “You don’t think there’s something going on, do you?” I blurt. “With Pilot and the scream—”
“There’s nothing going on.” Theo cuts me off.
I can see why. Adele looks terrified. She nestles into Theo’s side and he puts an arm around her. They look like a family. They are a family.
They don’t need me. I stand.
“Can you stay?” Adele begs. “Please?”