"Sit down? Are you kidding me? We look like we could set sail."

There was a sharp rap on the door. "Girls! Are you ready in there?"

Normally, a specialist operation such as this would require a senior-level flack such as Stan, Viola Preston's on-again off-again beau with the unp.r.o.nounceable last name, or even Larry Julius himself. But the aggressive femininity of Madame Nicole's domain had proved too much even for seasoned pros such as they, and instead, they had Florence Pendergast running the show. A spare, thin-faced woman constantly exhaling cigarette smoke through the veil of her hat, making her look like some sort of horror-movie special effect, the ambitious Miss Pendergast was one of the few women in the Olympus press office and was determined to make a success of the awesome responsibility with which she had been entrusted if it meant keeping them up all night and smashing Madame Nicole's shop to smithereens.

"I don't know. Are we?"

"Very funny, Gabby. The lights are all set up and boy, are they hot. We've got to get the shot before they set the curtains on fire."

"Zut alors!" Madame Nicole made a strange whinnying sound.

"Now, we want to get a shot of you two coming out of the dressing room, when Margo sees you for the first time. Kind of a play on the first time the groom sees the bride. We're using that as an image reference."

Gabby rolled her eyes.

"So whenever you're ready," Miss Pendergast continued, "just come out the door and we'll snap away. Side by side. Big smiles, please. Make it dreamy. As though you're imagining what it'll be like for you one day, when it's your turn to walk down the aisle."

Amanda looked doubtfully down at her enormous skirt, as wide and unyielding as a basketball cut in half. "I don't think we can both fit through the door."

"One at a time, then. Come on. Hurry, please."

Gabby sighed. "Well," she said, "I guess we can't stay in here forever."

Grimacing, the girls maneuvered themselves one by one out of the dressing room and into the blinding light of cameras, the metallic popping of the flashbulbs punctuated by Madame Nicole's small shrieks as the shower of heated gla.s.s fell on her cream velvet carpet. Margo Sterling, looking fresh as a daisy in a lemon-yellow silk dress and a chic Marlene Dietrich beret, sat on a pale peau de soie tuffet, a teacup poised daintily on the way to her lips.

"Well?" Margo asked when the photographers stopped to reload. Miss Pendergast had set about comforting the now-hysterical Madame Nicole. "What do you think of the dresses?"

Amanda bit her lip, half trying to think of something nice to say, half trying to stave off the sudden wave of nausea. She'd been feeling sick to her stomach an awful lot lately.

Gabby, as usual, was not so reticent. "Margie, you can't seriously be ... serious."

Margo's face fell. "What ... what do you mean?"

"They're huge, for starters. You saw, we could barely fit through that door. How are we going to walk down the aisle? We'll put someone's eye out with these bows. It's like we're wearing wings. And the skirt? It's so big a family of four could camp out in it. For all I know, they are. There's so much room under here I'd never know they were there."

Amanda stifled a laugh. Gabby was right. I could rent out s.p.a.ce under here, she thought. Make a buck or two as a landlady.

Margo scowled. "They're supposed to be big." A hard edge had crept into her voice. "They're modeled after the gowns Walter Plunkett is designing for Gone with the Wind. Madame Nicole says hoopskirts are going to be all the rage next year, after the movie comes out, and I'm going to be the first to have them in my wedding."

"Well, hoop-de-doo," Gabby said. "You're not the one walking around wearing an open umbrella, Margie."

Margo stiffened, preparing her response. Amanda watched the two of them anxiously. Normally, this was the point in any verbal disagreement when Gabby's eyes would begin to shine with the unnatural brightness that meant she had taken one too many green pills and was spoiling for a fight, but today, her expression was glazed, her voice strangely calm. What the h.e.l.l is she on? Amanda wondered. And can I get some?

"Amanda?" Margo said coolly, her eyes never leaving Gabby's. She seemed as perplexed as Amanda by Gabby's mellow expression. "Do you feel the same way?"

"Oh, I don't mind," Amanda lied. "Whatever you want, it's your wedding. Only ..." She trailed off, hesitating.

"Only what?"

"... only I just wondered if maybe they came in another color?"

A muscle jumped in Margo's jaw. "I already ordered pink flowers. And the studio likes Gabby in pink."

Gabby groaned. "Tell me about it."

"I know, I know that. I just wondered ... if there was anything else you were maybe considering ..."

"I'm not letting you wear black," Margo said shortly. "It's a wedding, not a funeral."

"Of course, I know that. I just thought, maybe a lovely soft gray-"

"What, so you can match your car?"

"Blue, then. I thought you loved blue."

"No good." Margo shook her head. "The pictures in the newspapers will be black-and-white, and blue photographs as white. Didn't you see Wallis Simpson's dress? She was wearing that gorgeous dress in robin's-egg blue, and then Life didn't tint the pictures and everyone who saw it made fun of her for trying to pa.s.s herself off as some sort of virgin bride."

"You're wearing white, aren't you?" Gabby said meanly.

Margo's jaw took on a funny set. "I've never been married before."

Amanda sighed. "Look, it's your big day, Margo. What you say goes." All three of them knew what a load of bull that was, but it seemed like the thing to say. "Maybe Gabby could wear this color, and I could do a soft lavender or something? It'd look the same in pictures. Pink is just such ..." She paused, searching for the right words. "Such a difficult color for redheads."

"You've worn it before," Margo said crossly. "You showed up at Mr. Karp's wrap party for The Nine Days' Queen in that pink gown."

That pink gown. Amanda felt a fist tighten around her heart at the memory. Harry had given her that dress, had chosen it himself to surprise her. She still remembered the sweet, scared look on his face as he presented it to her, eager for her to like it, hoping she'd understand what it meant.

"That was Mainbocher," she muttered, unable to look up for fear of crying.

"Well, these aren't. But they're pretty d.a.m.n close," Margo said, gesturing for one of Madame Nicole's frantic a.s.sistants to take her demita.s.se away. "Don't worry, though. They're going to give you both a really good price."

"Price?" Amanda gasped.

Margo leaned forward, beaming as though she were about to give them a wonderful surprise. "Well, normally one of these dresses costs about four hundred dollars. But because of all the publicity we're going to give them, Madame Nicole has agreed to give them to us for two."

"Two ... two hundred dollars?" Amanda stammered.

"Each," Margo added. "Don't worry. The studio will advance it. They'll just deduct five or ten bucks out of your paycheck every week until it's paid off."

Now I am going to be sick. Granted, this had hardly been an unusual feeling over the last couple of weeks, but this time, it felt serious. I wonder if Madame Nicole has ever had someone throw up all over her fancy velvet carpet.

"Well, just you wait until it's my turn," Gabby said, tugging at her enormous bow. "I'm going to get you back for this, Margo, and good."

Margo snorted. "I'm not holding my breath."

"You never know." Gabby smiled a mysterious smile Amanda knew she was copying from Barbara Stanwyck in The Mad Miss Manton. "It could be sooner than you think."

"Really?" Margo perked up, suddenly interested. "Things have gotten that serious with Eddie Sharp already?"

"Well," Gabby said, "we've been seeing an awful lot of each other. The magazines don't even know the half of it. Three times this week alone. He's been taking me everywhere. I've met all his friends. And not just on the Strip." She grinned. "Downtown. Central Avenue."

"Downtown?" Margo looked at Amanda worriedly, as though searching for help. "Gabby, I don't know. Isn't it awfully dangerous down there? I mean, it's full of-"

"Negroes?" Gabby said sharply, her chin tilted pugnaciously.

There she is, Amanda thought. There's the Gabby we know and love.

"I was going to say drugs," Margo said. "Drug dens and dope fiends."

"Well, I can't speak to that," Gabby said. "The most I've seen Eddie and his friends do is blow a stick or two of gage."

"Gage?" Margo's mouth dropped open. "Gabby, are you talking about marijuana?"

"I believe that's another name for it."

"Don't tell me you've tried it?"

"Oh"-Gabby waved her hands in the air, as though batting away a fly-"I've done way more than try."

"Gabby!" Margo's eyes darted around the room, as though a fleet of policemen were going to arrive any minute. "How can you? People go crazy from that. Reefer madness is a real thing, you know. You could lose your mind!"

"You're a.s.suming I have one to lose."

"And then it just leads to all kinds of other things," Margo continued. "All sorts of pills and needles and powders ..."

"Oh, Margie, please. Don't be such a square," Gabby said. "You think that's anything I haven't done before? What do you think the things the doctor gives you are? When Viola was a kid, you could buy cocaine by the gram right at the counter of the pharmacy, and she says those little green pills make you feel exactly the same. And opium? Morphine? Heroin? What the h.e.l.l do you think is in those sleeping pills Dr. Lipkin hands out like candy? You want to see dope fiends, take a look around the Olympus commissary sometime. Reefer is kid stuff compared to that. All it does is make you feel kind of happy and silly and calm, same as having a couple of drinks does. And it makes you feel so s.e.xy." Gabby lowered her voice to a naughty whisper. "Apparently, it makes things dynamite in the sack."

Now Amanda was interested. Gabby had been going on and on about losing her virginity since Amanda had known her, but Amanda had always a.s.sumed she'd spill everything the minute it happened. "Gabby, are you and Eddie sleeping together?"

"Not yet," Gabby said. "But it's just a matter of waiting for the right moment. He's made it clear he's interested, if you know what I mean. And don't give me that look, Margo," she added crossly. "I don't expect him to get down on one knee and propose first. But he'll want to. When it happens, it's going to be so incredible he'll never want to let me go. I'm going to knock his socks off, believe me. I've been studying all the pictures in those dirty books Viola keeps in her underwear drawer for ages. I'm going to show him things he's never even dreamed of. G.o.d knows I've been waiting long enough."

"But, Gabby," Margo said, her tone more plaintive than nagging, "what if you get into trouble?"

"Well, then I'll call Larry Julius," Gabby said. "That's what he's there for, isn't it?"

"Girls!" Florence Pendergast's smoke-belching cry brought them to attention. "We're almost ready with the next setup. Now, for this one, Madame Nicole and her attendants"-she gestured to a couple of small women in white smocks, who looked absolutely terrified at the prospect of being photographed-"are going to attempt to show you some other options, but you're going to act as though you love these dresses so much you couldn't bear to consider wearing anything else. All right?"

"They don't call it acting for nothing," Gabby whispered to Amanda.

"I heard that. Now come on, girls, this is for the magazines." The photographers raised their cameras as Gabby and Amanda smiled. "One, two, three ..."

"Yoo-hoo! I'm here!"

The famous voice, sultry and strong, was unmistakable. Every jaw in the room dropped to the gla.s.s-covered floor.

Diana Chesterfield. In the flesh.

She strode regally across the room, smiling graciously, as though surrounded by a coterie of adoring fans swooning over her every move. Amanda didn't know whether it was because she was currently encased in a wearable cupcake or because Bullock's Wilshire had finally cut off her last existing line of credit, but she found herself eyeing the movie star's up-to-the-minute clothing hungrily: the white raw-silk suit with the built-up shoulders and nipped waist that Harper's Bazaar had deemed "the silhouette of the new decade"; the broad-brimmed flying saucer of a hat; the enormous diamond brooch in the shape of a panther, its single emerald eye winking brightly from its onyx-spotted face.

Cartier. Wonder who that came from.

"There's my blushing bride," Diana cooed, swooping down to kiss the air on either side of the astonished Margo's cheeks. "Darling Margo. A million apologies, I'm so sorry I'm late, traffic was such a bore, as usual. Now tell me honestly, how are you?"

"Diana!" Margo gawped. "Surprised, I guess."

Diana let out a silvery peal of laughter. "Isn't she a doll?" she asked no one in particular. "She's going to be the most charming bride. Being in love suits her, don't you think? And, Gabby Preston, you brilliant thing." She clasped one of Gabby's small, sticky hands in both of her gloved ones. "I am just in awe of you. Absolutely in awe. The voice of Ella Fitzgerald in the body of Clara Bow. You're an absolute angel, that's what you are, sent by G.o.d to let us all hear a little of heaven."

"Golly whiz, Miss Chesterfield," Gabby said, for once in her life seeming at a loss for words. "Thank you so much."

"Please, call me Diana," the star replied, smiling warmly. "Now, I know you'll forgive me, because things have been so busy since I got back, but ever since that glorious night at the Oscars, I've been meaning to ask you to lunch and talk it all over."

"Really?" Gabby squeaked.

Diana nodded seriously. "Absolutely. Now, are they banging down your door with offers? Do you know what your next picture is going to be?"

Gabby shrugged nervously. "No. ... I mean, I know there's some stuff on the table. ..."

"Well, think about it carefully. I don't know who you've got advising you"-Margo and Amanda both knew the answer to this, which was no one, followed at some distance by Viola-"but you've got to be prudent. You've got heat right now, heat that could take you all the way to the top, but not with the wrong picture. It has to be quality." Diana paused, pouting thoughtfully. "There's a play opening in New York that might be a good fit. An American Girl, I think it's called. They've just started rehearsals, but the writer is Harry Gordon, so I'm sure they'll be negotiating the picture rights any minute."

"Harry Gordon! In New York?"

The words were out before Amanda could stop them, so seized was she with an irrational, wild mixture of joy and fear. On the one hand, his office hadn't been lying, and he hadn't been avoiding her; he really was away. On the other, if Harry was opening a play on Broadway, he'd be gone for months. When will I see him again? Will he even come back at all?

Diana turned slowly toward Amanda, looking the redhead up and down as though seeing her for the first time. If there was a flicker of recognition in her ice-blue eyes, it was quickly replaced by a look of impersonal appraisal. "I don't believe we've met," she said coolly.

So that's how she wants to play it, Amanda thought. Well, let her.

"Amanda Farraday," she said, lifting her chin defiantly. This may be Diana's show, but I can play my part my own way. She's the star, not the director.

"What a lovely name," Diana murmured. "Sometime you must tell me how you thought of it."

"Diana." Margo had finally found her voice. "I don't mean to be rude, but ... what are you doing here?"

"Oh my G.o.d!" Diana's hands sprang to her cheeks in a gesture of exaggerated surprise that had the bonus effect of advantageously displaying a diamond ring at least twice the size of Margo's. "Didn't Dane tell you?"

Margo stiffened. "Tell me what?"

"That I've been asked to join the bridal party. Groom's side, of course." She smiled sweetly. "You see, Dane dined at my place last night, and I'm afraid I was being such a terrible bore about just how terribly thrilled I am for the both of you and how I wished I could do something to help that he asked me to stand up for him, just to get me to stop flapping my mouth. And for old times' sake, I suppose," she added thoughtfully. "Now, don't worry, darling. I may be the best man, so to speak, but I'm not going to show up in a tuxedo. I mean, really, after Marlene, what's the point?" She flicked a lazy hand across the tulle of Amanda's skirt. "I suppose this ... is one of the options we're looking at?"

Speechless, Margo nodded.

"Well, this won't do at all, will it? The guests will mistake us for the wedding cake, and we can't have that." Diana poured herself a cup of tea and draped her body languorously across a velvet chaise. "Nicole," she called, "let's see something in blue. Something akin to that glorious Mainbocher Wallis Simpson was married in, don't you think? And bring some champagne. This is a festive occasion, after all." She let out a merry peal of laughter. "Just look at the three of us. Me, Gabby, and Amanda. A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead." She struck a pose, the kind that silently invited the flashbulbs to pop away. "Oh my goodness. We're going to have such fun."

SEVENTEEN.