Chapter 35 1959
Aria Jones is sixteen years old today. She’s standing outside the Chateau Marmont, Flitter on one side, Calliope the other. Their present is to take her across the road to Schwab’s.
“Baby steps,” Calliope says.
“I can’t believe you haven’t left this place,” Flitter adds.
Aria looks up at the showgirl. She spins happily. Her silver dollar doesn’t topple. So Aria steps onto Sunset Boulevard with her friends and hurries across to the other side. There. She made it!
It’s the best birthday present ever.
“Calliope Burns!” Jim, the man who works the soda stand calls, and Calliope squeezes her way over and clears three occupied seats with her smile. Then Jim makes Aria a Schwab’s Special, which is so full of chocolate and ice cream she won’t be able to eat for a week.
It’s early evening and all the seats along the soda fountain are full. It’s standing room only, the room buzzy with chatter, cigarette smoke, and laughter. Jim makes the special for Calliope and Flitter too, and Flitter holds up her spoon and says, “Happy birthday, Aria.”
They chink spoons and take a bite, and it’s like that first sleepover. The three sisters close their eyes and savor the gooey, delectable glory that is an ice cream sundae made just for you on your birthday.
“Let me take a picture.” Jim pulls out a Polaroid camera and captures the three of them, smiling and chocolate-smeared, arms around one another.
He passes it to Aria and she knows that this, this is the best birthday present of all.
“Calliope Burns?” Someone thrusts out a napkin for Calliope to sign, then a dozen people want her autograph and her sundae melts into liquid gloop while she signs and smiles and Flitter and Aria scrape every last mouthful from their glasses.
Then Marian Monti walks in and the crowd moves over to her.
“Sometimes it’s nice not to be the most famous person in the room,” Calliope says.
Flitter tips up her glass and drinks the last bit of ice cream. “Lucky for me, being the least famous is my natural state.”
“It won’t take much longer,” Calliope reassures her.
It’s been three years. After less time than that, the starlets usually become stars—or else they vanish.
“I get one birthday wish,” Aria says to Flitter. “Since I don’t believe in wishes anymore, you can have it.”
Many people would mock a secondhand wish. But Flitter closes her eyes and scrunches up her face like she’s putting everything she has into making her wish.
Someone squeezes into their group. Marian Monti, looking like a blonder, plumper, slightly more frayed version of Calliope. She kisses Aria’s cheek. “Happy birthday.”
She passes Aria a gift—a beautiful, autographed, first edition of Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan.
“People think it’s a vulgar little book,” Marian says.
“But it’s really about a powerful woman.
That’s why they don’t like it.” She winks and sashays off, the most famous woman in Hollywood, who sleeps on the mattress in the turret on the nights when her husband’s had too much to drink and his fists are looking for trouble.
“You want to go back and curl up with your new book, don’t you?” Calliope smiles at the way Aria’s hand is trying hard not to open the covers and dive right in.
“Not yet.” Flitter hoists a bag onto the counter. “Our gift is education.” She takes out a notepad and pen.
“Education?” Aria wrinkles her nose.
“Of the best kind,” Calliope reassures her.
Flitter sketches a very detailed picture of a naked man and a naked woman although, based on Aria’s frequent sightings by the poolside, she’s being extremely generous to the man. “This,” Flitter announces, “is the Three Sisters School of Sex Education.”
Aria starts laughing because the face she’s drawn on the man is an excellent likeness of Peter Oldham, the sexiest man in Hollywood, who’ll be Calliope’s leading man in her next film. “How true to life is this?” she asks, indicating his nether regions.
“Very,” Calliope reassures her, and now they’re all laughing.
The next half hour is filled with much hilarity as Flitter and Calliope give Aria comprehensive diagrams about the things she could do with a man. The only time she stops laughing is when Flitter describes the act that got Calliope her breakthrough role in a movie.
“Here are some supplies to get you started,” Calliope interrupts, opening the bag and giving Aria a pack of condoms and a box of Enovid, the new drug that almost every starlet at the Marmont takes: a highly effective contraceptive that doctors won’t let you have other than for menstrual disorders—unless you’re buddies with Dr. Foster and the pharmacists at Schwab’s. “Have fun, but stay safe.”
“Thus concludes your formal education,” Flitter says. “You’ve read everything in the library, you’ve finally left the castle, and now you know how to do the no-pants dance. I officially proclaim you an adult.”
But there’s one more thing Aria needs to do before she’s really an adult.
Back at the Marmont, she goes down to the garage to find Jupiter.
He’s sitting behind the wheel of Peter Oldham’s red Ferrari Superamerica, eyes closed, a dream of freedom behind his lids.
When Aria slips into the passenger seat, his eyes fly open and the dreams fly away, guilt and fear replacing them.
He relaxes when he sees that it’s just her.
“You near on gave me a heart attack.” He pops open the glove box, takes out Peter Oldham’s Marlboros. “Smoke?”
Aria accepts the cigarette. Jupiter lights it for her with the actor’s gold lighter, which costs more than Jupiter will earn in his lifetime.
She inhales for courage. “I need you to kiss me.”
He chokes on smoke. “What?”
“I’ve seen plenty of scenes that wouldn’t pass the Hollywood Code on cabanas by the pool. But I’ve hardly ever seen anyone kiss. People only kiss in the movies. And Flitter and Calliope forgot to explain kissing.” She pulls Flitter’s drawings out of her bag.
Jupiter takes one look and groans. “Jesus, Aria. You need better friends.”
“I have exactly the right friends. Ones who’ll show me what I need to know so I understand what I’m saying yes to. And so I don’t find myself in a room saying no to a man who pretends not to hear.”
Jupiter repeats, “Jesus, Aria.” He stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray. “All right. I’ll kiss you. But given what you just said, maybe it’s better if you kiss me first.”
Before she loses her courage, Aria leans forward and touches her lips to Jupiter’s. It’s soft. Warm. Nice. She draws back. “How did I do?”
He grins. “Not sure. You better do it again.”
She laughs. Then she does do it again, a little harder, a little longer, and over the course of about twenty minutes, in a bright red Ferrari, she learns how to kiss.