"Me?" Dexter looked puzzled.

"Yes. Did you just get here, or did you see that band?"

"See the band?" Dexter began to laugh. "Gabby, I was in the band."

"You were?" Gabby's eyes widened in surprise. "That wasn't you on sax. And I didn't see a piano."

"I was on trumpet." Shaking his head, he snapped open an instrument case and carefully laid the horn against the worn velvet lining. "It's okay. I guess I don't stand out as much here as on the Olympus lot, huh?"

"It's not that, it's just ..." Gabby hunted desperately for some way to feasibly change the subject. "I just mostly noticed the saxophone player," she said finally. Lame, but not untrue.

Dexter's eyes shone. "He's something else, isn't he? He's just moved back from Paris. I met him over there when he was playing with Benny Carter and Django Reinhardt."

"Jango what?"

"Django Reinhardt. He's a Belgian gypsy with two fingers, and the greatest guitar player in the history of the world. It's surprising you haven't heard of him."

"Not really." Hollywood was an insular place. Gabby listened to records the studio gave her, watched the movies they told her to see. She could name every Broadway play a producer had optioned over the past eighteen months and reel off the vital statistics of any up-and-comer who might challenge her for a part, but the outside world was a lot of noise, consigned to a few blurry black-and-white minutes of newsreel sandwiched between a double feature. Until embarra.s.singly recently, Gabby had thought Benito Mussolini was just the latest baritone in MGM's long search for a continental replacement for Nelson Eddy. "I haven't heard of a lot of things. What's the sax player's name, anyway?" she asked.

Dexter looked at her strangely. "Didn't they announce it?"

"Yes, but it was too noisy to hear. I didn't hear your name either, remember?"

Dexter pulled a crumpled leaflet out of his pocket. "Here's the program. You can read all about everything here."

Gabby looked down hopelessly at the smeared text marching mercilessly across the creased paper. Maybe it was the pills she had swallowed or all the Scotch she had drunk, but the letters seemed to be jumping around more than ever, swarming and multiplying hideously, like a colony of ants on a clean kitchen floor. She squinted, willing them to stay put, making out a C here, an X there, but it was no use. She might as well have been staring into a black hole.

"It doesn't matter," she said quickly. "I was just asking to be polite. I'd better go and find Eddie now anyway."

Dexter was looking at her intently. "You know, Gabby," he said quietly, "if you have trouble reading, just say so. I can help you. n.o.body else needs to know."

"I don't need any help," Gabby hissed, shoving the program back at his chest. "Especially not from someone ... someone like you."

She regretted the words the moment they came out of her mouth, but it was too late now. She'd been a.s.signed to this script, and she was sticking to it. Ignoring Dexter's look of hurt and confusion, she pushed past him imperiously, flinging open the door that had swallowed Eddie.

"Gabby." The doorway belched forward a cloud of thick, pungent smoke. Eddie choked out her name in a dry, froglike croak, gazing at her with placid, red-rimmed eyes. "What are you doing back here?"

"Looking for you," Gabby retorted. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it's bad manners to leave your date waiting?"

"No." Eddie burst out laughing, smoke streaming from his mouth. "I don't think I've gotten to that part yet in my, whaddyacallit, my etiquette course."

Now they were all laughing, all the musicians crammed in the small smoky s.p.a.ce. Gabby wasn't the least intimidated anymore, just angry with all these grown men hiding away in a closet like children sneaking cookies from the pantry before supper.

"Well, it is," she said, tapping her foot impatiently. "And it's even worse manners to have some of that and not offer her so much as a single puff."

There, she thought. That'll show 'em. And Dexter, whom she could still feel behind her, staring at her back with those wounded puppy-dog eyes.

"Oh, honey," Eddie chuckled. "See, this here isn't a cigarette, sweetheart."

"I know exactly what it is," Gabby said impatiently, "and believe me, it's exactly what I need right now."

A chorus of hoots went up from the stoned musicians.

"d.a.m.n," one of them said. "Looks like you hooked a live one."

"Watch out, Sharpie," said another, "that chick of yours is viper mad."

Eddie lowered his voice. "You really want some? You sure?"

Gabby wasn't sure, not exactly, but the gauntlet had been thrown down. "Of course," she said firmly. "I'm dying for it."

"All right." A little smile played over Eddie's lips. "Benny, pa.s.s her the joint."

Benny, the guy who had called her viper mad-Gabby thought he was the trombone player-dutifully handed over the little smoldering bundle. Gabby held it gingerly between her thumb and forefinger, examining it. Shorter and flatter than a regular cigarette, it looked like one of the tobacco roll-ups the camera crews were always smoking on set.

"Wrap your chops round that stick of tea," somebody sang softly. Another couple of people joined in. "Blow that gage, and get high with me. ..."

"All right, Gabby," Eddie said. "It's simple. Just suck it slowly. Breathe in deep and don't exhale until I tell you to, okay?"

It felt like swallowing a lit match. Her throat, then her lungs felt like they were on fire. I'm suffocating, Gabby thought. I'm going to die.

"Ready to exhale?" Eddie asked. "Okay. One, two ..."

And suddenly, his hot, open mouth was on hers, greedily sucking in the vapor that erupted from Gabby's mouth. This is happening, she thought wildly. Eddie Sharp's lips are touching mine. They lingered just a moment, just long enough to inhale every last bit of her smoke, before he pulled away again, grinning at her.

"Not bad for your first time," he murmured.

It was not quite a kiss. Not quite.

But sometimes, Gabby thought as everything around her dissolved into a warm, happy haze, sometimes not quite is more than enough.

FIFTEEN.

When Leo Karp told Margo she'd better start sleeping at her studio bungalow from now on, Dane Forrest had to summon every last bit of his acting prowess to hide his relief.

It wasn't that he wouldn't miss her while she was playing the role of a lifetime as Olympus's virgin bride. But Leo Karp had just thrown him a curveball that would make Lefty Grove weep with envy, and he needed some time on his own.

To think. I just need to think.

His first impulse was to go straight to Diana's house and pour his heart out to her, but he quickly thought better of it. It might be late at night, but the photographers surrounding his sister's very slightly decrepit Beverly Hills mansion observed no division between night and day. Even now, they were probably out there, huddled in the bushes out back by the pool, hanging from the treetops in the pitch-darkness like a pack of bats. Vampires, more like. All he needed was a single blurry photograph of him, a newly engaged man, entering or leaving the home of his "former paramour" at a suspicious hour to leak to the press and they'd be on him like flies on a carca.s.s.

Poor Margo. She'd looked so hopeful, so pathetically happy when Mr. Karp had started talking about wedding gowns and diamond rings. Did she have any idea what she was getting into? Their marriage would be one long nightmare of damage control, scarcely begun before people started waiting for it to end. It wasn't a shotgun wedding, it was a snapshot one. Was that what Margo wanted? If it wasn't, he ought to save her by breaking her heart. Be cruel to be kind. Send her back to Pasadena to lick her wounds, find a nice boy to marry, have a family and a real life.

And if it is what she wants? Then she wasn't the girl Dane thought he might love. She was a girl he didn't know at all-and yet knew all too well. Just like every girl in this G.o.dforsaken desert town.

What he needed was a good, stiff drink. Schwab's was too crowded with lower-level studio types, the kind who, having heard whispers around the lot, would be full of questions he'd rather not answer, and he wasn't dressed for any of his regular haunts on the strip.

Instead, he found himself pulling over outside at Barney's Beanery. Even a coffee shop had to keep a bottle of something stronger behind the counter, he reasoned, and it was so near to closing time, the place had to be almost empty. Safe.

The only car in the parking lot was a little dove-gray coupe with a black silk scarf draped over the dashboard, a trace of familiar perfume wafting out the open window.

Why not? Dane thought. He had to be with someone tonight.

She was sitting in a booth in the back, an untouched pot of coffee in front of her. Her hair was copper; her face was white.

"Amanda." Dane felt alive with possibility. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Oh, Ernie." She looked up at him with eyes that melted his soul. "From now on you'd better just call me Ginger."

SIXTEEN.

The impending Sterling/Forrest nuptials took over Hollywood, just like they were supposed to. All anyone could talk about was the Wedding of the Year.

The breathless details, filtered carefully to the magazines by the publicity office, were on everybody's lips, everywhere from the opulent gambling tables in the back room of the Clover Club to the bare-bones lobby of the Central Casting office: Margo's four-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring, custom-ordered from Cartier in the same style as the (admittedly much bigger) one the former Edward VIII had given to Mrs. Simpson. Dane's absurdly romantic proposal, which apparently involved about a thousand pale pink tea roses and a moonlit ride on Abraham and Sophie, the two Olympus horses devoted Sterling/Forrest watchers knew the couple had been astride when they'd had their first reported lovers' spat during the filming of The Nine Days' Queen, now under limited rerelease as The Picture Where It All Began. The planned honeymoon trip to Paris, paid for personally by none other than Mr. Karp, where the stunning Mrs. Forrest would first come face to face with her specially made haute couture trousseau, also-it was reported-courtesy of Uncle Leo.

"A Fairy-Tale Wedding for a Fairy-Tale Bride," said Photoplay.

"Lucky in Life, Lucky Love," advertised Modern Screen.

Picture Palace took a longer view: "Margo Sterling Is Living the Dream of Every Girl in America."

Still, this was a town whose principle industry was the manufacture of illusion. The citizens of Hollywood were all too aware that things were not always what they seemed. There were always plenty of cynics eager to burst even the prettiest bubble. Rumors abounded that the dashing Dane-who frankly had a bit of a reputation around the gin joints of Sunset Strip-was perhaps not dashing quite as ... eagerly to the altar as the Olympus publicity machine might have you believe. The most tenacious know-it-alls were already eagerly examining Margo Sterling's enviably slender waist for the telltale thickening that must have sealed the deal.

Some of the lesser-and less studio-friendly-gossip rags were running a story with the sensational headline "Inside Margo Sterling's Dark Past," which used as its main source a Mrs. Phipps McKendrick, nee Evelyn Gamble, a "young Pasadena society matron" who relayed "in the strictest of confidence" how Margo, in a former life, "had always been a troublemaker, terribly fast with boys" and how Mrs. McKendrick hoped marriage might reform her old friend and at last provide some relief to her poor parents, who had been "just heartbroken since she callously abandoned them to pursue a life of hedonistic pleasure on the silver screen."

"Can you believe this?" Margo had hissed to Dane as she pulled the smudged clipping from her purse on one of their rare nights together since the studio had laid down the law about just the level of blameless chast.i.ty they expected from their blushing bride. "Abandoned them? Is that what they call being disowned these days?"

"I don't know what you're getting so upset about," Dane said, downing his martini in one gulp. He'd been drinking a lot lately. "Just forget about it. I don't know why you even look at that stuff in the first place."

"She's always hated me," Margo fumed. "She married Phipps, she's got everything she ever wanted, and still she's trying to ruin me."

"Who?" Dane looked confused.

"Evelyn Gamble. From Pasadena. The one I told you about, who used to be so appalling to me at school? She was there that awful night, the one when I ran into you late at Schwab's?" Margo shuddered, unwilling to go on. Dane gave her a blank look. "Forget about it," she said finally, disgusted.

Then there was the matter of the other story floating around, one made all the more unpleasant by the fact that it was probably true: that on the night Dane Forrest was supposedly proposing on horseback to the swooning Margo Sterling, making all of her dreams come true, he had actually been spotted in a back booth at Barney's Beanery (not a very s.e.xy alliteration, true, but there you have it) with an ethereally beautiful if grimly white-faced Amanda Farraday.

Was he giving his mistress the brush-off? Simply continuing something that had been going on the whole time? Or-tantalizingly-starting something up? All speculation-and like everything, it depended on who you asked-but it was generally agreed that they had looked awfully cozy working their way through the better part of a bottle of Scotch.

The gossip about Amanda's nocturnal activities had reached the lady in question by way of the loathsome Mildred, the down-the-hall tenant at the boardinghouse, who seemed finally to have figured out just who her glamorous neighbor was. Gleefully, she recounted all the different hypotheses "you know, going around the inside circles."

"Well, I guess now I know why you got all these fancy outfits," Mildred chortled. "But if you're s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g some big movie star, what the h.e.l.l are you doing in a dump like this? Guess you ain't very good at it. Send him over to me when he's sick of you, will ya? I'll show him a thing or two."

For her part, Amanda had been sufficiently horrified by the story to call Margo immediately-if you could call it "immediate" when you had to wait in line for half an hour to get a crack at the phone.

"We just happened to run into each other and had a drink," Amanda said when she finally reached Margo after eleven tries and enough nickels to keep her in coffee and milk for a week. "I'd had a hard day, and Dane was kind enough to listen. I swear nothing more happened than a handshake goodbye before we climbed into our separate cars. There's nothing more to it than that." She's got to believe me, Amanda thought. And even if she doesn't, at least it's the truth.

But Margo was dismissive. "There's no need to explain or apologize. In fact, I'm glad you called," she continued. "I've got something to ask you, but I wasn't sure how to reach you." She paused for a moment, almost as though she were reading from a script. "I wondered if you'd like to be one of my bridesmaids."

"Jeepers," Amanda said, temporarily transformed back into Norma Mae Gustafson, Oklahoma hick, from the shock. "Are you sure?"

"Positive. The studio thinks it's a good idea."

"But do you?"

Margo sighed. "Why would it possibly matter what I think?"

Larry Julius's hands are all over this. It was, Amanda had to admit, a brilliant strategy. What better way to explain away a late-night meeting with another woman than for that woman to be publicly affirmed as an extra-special super-close best-best friend of the bride? They could have been huddled in that booth planning a surprise for Margo, or better yet, celebrating the fact that the proposal they'd dreamed up together had gone off without a hitch. It was the perfect cover, so perfect that Amanda knew her partic.i.p.ation in what was fast becoming the Wedding of the Decade was absolutely nonnegotiable.

Joining Amanda in the highly visible bridal party was Gabby Preston, an obvious choice given her previously established-if privately rocky-friendship with Margo, and the fact that her star was undoubtedly finally on the rise. Ever since her performance after the Oscars last month, Gabby was nearly as ubiquitous in the Hollywood press as the frenzied speculation over the contents of Margo Sterling's wedding registry. Reams of paper and whole segments of radio shows were devoted to wondering what Gabby would do next. Would she make a picture? Release an alb.u.m? Both?

And just what was the nature of her relationship with that fast-talking, fast-living bandleader Eddie Sharp, with whom she'd been running around town suspiciously often of late?

Eddie Sharp's girl. Quite a leap for someone who just two short months ago had been barely allowed to be seen in public without sausage curls and a sailor suit.

Rex Mandalay was designing the wedding gown, of course. As for the Paris trousseau, it was currently being fitted to the headless dressmaker's dummy marked "Margo Sterling" in the costume department of Olympus-a shrewd customer like Leo Karp was hardly going to sh.e.l.l out thousands of dollars for haute couture when he could have the seamstresses already on his payroll knock off reasonable approximations of whatever was in Vogue that month.

But Larry Julius's surveys of the public showed that the "average American woman," whoever she might be, would like at least one aspect of the "royal wedding"-as onlookers were beginning to call it, only somewhat facetiously-that she could "relate to"; therefore, it had been decided that the bridesmaids' gowns would be selected off the rack in a splashy shopping trip c.u.m photo shoot that would be the latest installment in the breathlessly chronicled journey to the altar. Margo and her Doting Bridesmaids. Laughing, gushing, pink-cheeked, and full of hope. Just like any other group of girlfriends in America with an unlimited budget and access to the most exclusive by-appointment-only bridal boutique in Beverly Hills.

"Look at us," Gabby crowed. She and Amanda were crowded into the dressing room of Madame Nicole's Salon Parisienne, the two of them swathed in enough pink tulle to outfit a corps de ballet of obese ballerinas. "More likely than not, they'll build a whole picture around us. A brunette, a redhead, and Margo's blonde. One of each. Believe me, around these parts, that's what pa.s.ses for a great idea."

Oh, please, Amanda thought. Please let Gabby be right. Anything to stay an employee of Olympus Studios for just a few months longer, get a few more paychecks, have a few more precious weeks before they came to haul her off to debtor's prison. Do they even still have those?

Outside the door, a crew of burly photographers were laying waste to the shop, moving whatever they had to to get the right shot. Madame Nicole's anguished cries came through the slatted door. "Mais non, mais non! Not zee Louis Quatorze armoire!"

"Lady, it's blocking the sight line," came the gruff reply. "We'll put it back when we're done."

"But eet eez tres delicate! Please be careful! Zat armoire eez worth more zan all of you put togezzaire!"

"Togezzaire," Gabby snorted, mocking the distraught woman's heavy French accent. "You know she's from Cleveland, right?"

"Not really?"

"That's what Rex Mandalay says. He used to know her back when she worked the men's counter at the old Hamburger's Department Store. Salon Parisienne." Gabby sniffed. "The closest she ever got to Paris is selling a necktie to Maurice Chevalier." She maneuvered around Amanda, examining her reflection critically in the three-way mirror. "Get a load of this. Can you believe the size of this thing?"

Amanda reached behind to pat the huge bow at the back of her own dress, its stiffened wings reaching inches past the confines of her waist. "It is going to make it kind of hard to sit down."