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Will and Arden had made a film together, a big-budget action movie, two years earlier, when Arden was a mere twenty years old. Will had played her father. The film had done well at the box office, although Elliot and Maggie had watched it at her house and laughed at Arden trying to make a mediocre script sound like Chekov.
Maggie glanced at Arden’s ensemble for the evening: a mess of black leather and tulle, with a black lipstick that only accentuated her thin lips. It wasn’t that Arden was unattractive—she had a certain Euro-chicness about her with her blue-black hair—it was just that she looked mean. She looked like she would throw a sack of kitten in a lake and not turn back, Elliot had once said, and Maggie knew just what he meant. Elliot knew people, it was a shame his father didn’t have the same sixth sense.
Arden pushed in between Stella and Will. ‘Is it true you’re going to be my new leading man?’ she purred. ‘We could be the next Julia and Richard.’
Maggie rolled her eyes. She knew Arden was hoping to topple her from her pedestal and had gone from playing edgy, asexual roles to a recent part in a romantic tragedy.
‘Arden, what are you talking about?’ Will asked impatiently, draining his wine and waving the empty glass at a waiter for a new one.
‘I had lunch with Zoe’s old assistant Josh,’ she said knowingly. ‘He told me all about the film.’
Maggie, Will and Arden all shared a manager but Zoe was, and would always be, Maggie’s closest friend and confidante.
‘According to Josh, Zoe wants to know if I’m interested in the role. I knew she was seeing the big four studios, but I kind of guessed she’d go with Jeff, he’s a class act, despite what people say about him as a person.’ She looked at Maggie pointedly. ‘I always think it’s important to judge people on their talent, not their reputation.’
Maggie smiled. ‘I always think it’s important not to judge people,’ she said politely.
Arden looked like she knew she had lost that round and she turned back to Will, touching his chest with one black-leather-gloved hand.
‘Let me know if you’re going to be my leading man, Will;
I certainly hope so,’ she said in a feverish voice, which made Maggie glance at Stella and make a face. It wasn’t easy being with Will. Women loved him, and girls like Arden would always be using him for the next career move.
But what was the role Arden was talking about? Her brain was screaming. Will was a superb actor, at the top of his game right now. If there was a film he was being considered for, Maggie wanted to know. The only part of their marriage that worked was when they talked about work and although Zoe managed both of them, Maggie still felt proprietary towards Will and his career moves.
The movie he made with Arden had been something Maggie and Zoe had thought was a bad idea, which proved to be true at the box office. She didn’t want Will to make any more stupid choices—God knows he had made enough of them over the years.
Arden swanned off towards Bradley Cooper, and Maggie turned to Will.
‘What role is she talking about? She seems thrilled to have the chance to work with you.’ Maggie imitated Arden’s breathy delivery.
Will scoffed and took a large slug of wine. ‘As I said to Zoe, if you think I’m interested in the book that was responsible for ending my marriage, then you’re kidding yourself.’
Maggie gasped. ‘Zoe’s casting The Art of Love?’
‘Casting?’ exclaimed Will. ‘She’s trying to produce it as well, which is why I guess she was sitting with Jeff. I heard she signed that sad sack writer you love so much.’
Maggie clutched the stem of her glass and nodded. ‘Excuse me,’ she said and rushed to the bathroom.
Pushing open the door, she was grateful to see the plush bathroom was unoccupied except for the bathroom attendant.
Zoe had signed Hugh Cavell? She wanted to produce The Art of Love and hadn’t told her? Why hadn’t she asked her to be involved? They did everything together.
This was how they had rolled for twenty years and now Zoe was keeping secrets.
Christ, she was the one who had introduced Zoe to the goddamned book.
It was the most profound and beautiful book about love that Maggie had ever read, not that she had read many books. Hell, she had cried over this book, bought copies for everyone she knew and then walked out of her marriage.
She wanted what the author and his wife had had in The Art of Love, and nothing less.
The author had nursed his wife through cancer, had seen her through her best and worst, and he spoke of his wife in a way that Maggie doubted any man had ever spoken of her. It was her greatest desire to meet Hugh Cavell and learn from him everything she needed to know about love, and how to have a decent relationship.
She had even told Zoe all this. It was only now that Zoe’s reaction at the time made sense.
‘Maybe he doesn’t want to be some sort of relationship guru,’ she had said. ‘He’s just a journalist who wrote a memoir, I don’t think he’s really able to offer anything else beyond this.’
Zoe must have already met him by this stage.
The treachery of Zoe excluding Maggie from this deal made her both confused and angry as she faced her reflection in the mirror.
She was still beautiful, she was still slim and elegant, but there were subtle changes around her eyes, tiny highways of lines. All roads lead to Hollywood, she thought as she pulled at one to see if she should consider a facelift, but she couldn’t concentrate on her own reflection, so she knew she was upset.
Zoe knew she wanted to play Simone, she had told Zoe this when she’d given her the book. Even though Maggie was the wrong side of thirty-five and Simone was only thirty when she died, Maggie could still play younger—
The bathroom door opening interrupted her thoughts as another attendant came in to relieve the first one. Maggie watched the new girl in the mirror as she straightened the perfume bottles and made sure the hand towels were perfectly lined up.
She was beautiful, Maggie thought with envy, as she looked back at the mirror, aware of the slight crêping of the skin on her décolletage in the light. She stood taller and pulled her shoulders back.
Maybe Zoe had decided that she, Maggie Hall, was too old to play Simone? The thought hit her like a slap to the face.
‘Are you an actress?’ she asked the girl. Girls like this worked industry parties for any opportunity, each girl seemingly more lithe, beautiful and willing than the one before.
This girl would have more luck in the men’s bathroom, thought Maggie wryly.
‘No,’ said the girl, in a voice that was husky and low, the voice many voice-over artists wished they had. The girl was a complete package.
‘Really?’ she asked, surprised.
The girl shook her blond head and shrugged. She could have been a model, thought Maggie, taking in the long slender frame and startling green eyes.
‘So what do you do?’ asked Maggie, intrigued.
She must be the only beautiful girl in LA who doesn’t want to be an actress, she thought, almost laughing aloud at the irony. The girl reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t quite place her.
The girl paused. ‘I’m working on a research project,’ she said vaguely.
‘Oh, you’re at college?’
‘Kind of. I’m working on a thesis of sorts.’
Beautiful and smart, thought Maggie, as she turned back to the mirror. Beautiful and dumb had far more currency in LA, but still.
‘I never went to college, but I would have liked to,’ said Maggie.
‘You seem to have done okay without it,’ the girl said with a little laugh.
‘I guess I have,’ said Maggie, smiling along with her. ‘Do you work this kind of event often?’ she asked, wondering why she cared.
‘If I can,’ the girl said. ‘I also do waitressing and valet parking, anything really.’
‘Good for you,’ said Maggie, aware that it might sound patronizing, but she truly did respect hard work.
Maggie sat on the round love seat in the centre of the room, and pulled off one purple Givenchy shoe.
‘Wearing these shoes is what I imagine Chinese footbinding was like,’ she said as she rubbed her feet. ‘I said I’m an eight but I think I should have taken the eight and a half.’
‘Yeah,’ said the girl. ‘I’m an eight in some shoes and an eight and a half in others.’ There was a pause and then the girl spoke again. ‘Your dress is amazing.’
Maggie looked down at her figure-hugging lilac Lanvin dress and sighed. ‘It’s okay, I guess. Took me and my stylists over half a year to organize this outfit and I wasn’t even presenting. Sometimes it’s exhausting being perfect,’ she said dramatically and laughed.
The girl smiled shyly and Maggie shook her head. ‘Are you sure you’re not an actress? Have you ever tried it? Even modelling, perhaps? The camera would absolutely love you, you’re incredibly beautiful.’
‘I never really thought about it,’ said the girl, blinking a few times and frowning. ‘My parents think being an actor is a waste of time and education, unless of course you’re on Broadway in some obscure Russian play.’ She laughed.
‘Maybe,’ said Maggie defensively. ‘But my house in Malibu is evidence that they’re wrong.’
The girl laughed politely. ‘I guess I’ve never even thought about acting.’
Maggie narrowed her eyes at her. Was she being disingenuous or was she serious? False modesty was something Maggie couldn’t stand, along with liars and cheaters, which often made her wonder why she was still living in LA.
‘What do you want to do?’ she asked.
‘My mom would like me to do law, but I can’t see myself doing all that arguing every day,’ she said. ‘If I get to choose, I guess I’d like to be a social worker or something.’
Maggie’s head snapped up.
‘What for?’ she said. ‘Social workers are assholes. They say one thing, but do another.’
‘Really?’ The girl frowned. ‘I just like helping people.’
‘Then I suggest you find another way,’ said Maggie roughly as she stood up, shoes in hand.
‘Okay,’ said the girl, looking intimidated.
Sometimes, Maggie knew, she could be almost too candid, too raw. But this was also what made her such a powerful presence on screen. She wasn’t afraid to show her character’s pain on her face or in the way she moved.
Softening, she smiled at the girl.
‘I haven’t introduced myself, I’m Maggie Hall,’ she said, extending her hand. She hated it when big stars just assumed everyone knew who they were. Manners are free, as Zoe always reminded her clients.
‘I know who you are,’ said the girl shyly, taking Maggie’s hand. ‘I’m Dylan Mercer.’
‘And now I know who you are,’ said Maggie warmly. ‘Great name; you really could be an actress,’ she said again, laughing.
‘And you could be an agent the way you hustle,’ Dylan laughed back. ‘I’ve been watching all the business going on here tonight, it’s crazy.’
‘I know.’ Maggie shrugged. ‘I could have been, but I like the free clothes too much.’ She winked at Dylan, looked a little closer at her and shook her head. ‘God, you remind me of someone,’ she said. ‘Hey, can I have your number? I mean, I know you don’t want to be an actor, but sometimes my assistant needs a little help. And you did say you like helping people. Maybe, if you’re interested, you could do a few errands for me here and there?’
Dylan nodded excitedly, pulled a pen from her pocket, and wrote her details on the back of a card from the events company.
Maggie took the card and handed her shoes to Dylan.
‘Hold these, would you?’ she said as she put the card into her clutch purse and smiled. ‘Thank you, Dylan, I’ll be sure to keep you in mind.’
Turning, she walked towards the door.
‘Your shoes,’ said Dylan, holding out the strappy Givenchy’s.
‘Keep them,’ said Maggie with a toss of her shining blond head. ‘I don’t need them. You might make something on eBay with them—Maggie Hall’s shoes from Oscars night—or keep ‘em and they might make a great story one day. Either way, you win.’
Chapter 3 (#ue3922b53-1c39-52b3-a21e-b444c5ff5ebd)
Dylan stared at Maggie Hall’s discarded shoes in disbelief, turning them over and studying each detail.
She had never owned anything as gorgeous and frivolous as these, she thought, quelling the desire to slip off her plain black flats from the Gap, and try on the Givenchy’s. Her mother believed in buying the best you could afford, but ‘functional is always better than fancy,’ she would tell Dylan whenever she lusted after something pretty and useless.
She shoved the shoes in an empty gift bag left by a guest and placed them under the bench, then looked at herself in the mirror. Was she really as beautiful as Maggie Hall said?
She was okay-looking, she thought, but growing up with intellectual parents meant you were much more focused on your brain than your looks.
Dinner time in the Mercers’ brownstone was spent discussing her mother’s ethical legal riddles from her university tenure and her father’s more bizarre psychiatric cases, while Dylan tried to keep up with the conversation.
She was bright, but she had to work hard for her marks and staying on the honor roll wasn’t easy but she did it because her parents expected nothing less of her.
Sometimes Dylan longed to remind them that she didn’t have their genetic code so it was unreasonable to expect her to be as brilliant as them, but a part of her was grateful that they treated her as though she was an extension of them.
That was until she found the letter they had never shown her.
‘Excuse me.’ She heard a voice and turned to see another famous face, a starlet who had recently been named as the sexiest woman in film. ‘Do you have a Band-Aid? My shoes are killing me.’
Dylan opened the first-aid kit, took out a Band-Aid and handed it to the girl. Now she was beautiful, Dylan thought, after the girl had left the bathroom.
She glanced at her face in the mirror again. It was too wide; the sort of face that didn’t look right in everyday life, but it did kind of work in photos. She might have sought out modelling work, if she’d even known where to start, but it never seemed like the right time to say that to her law professor mother, with tenure at Columbia, or her ailing psychiatrist father, who had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
As more women came into the bathroom, there were several faces Dylan recognized, but she wasn’t as star-struck any more. Hell, she had Maggie Hall’s Givenchy shoes! She couldn’t wait to get home and tell her best friend back in New York.
That was the sort of thing Addie loved to hear. During their almost daily Skype sessions, Addie always wanted to know what celebrities Dylan had seen in LA.
But in the two months she’d been in LA, Dylan hadn’t seen many, until tonight. She thought she’d glimpsed Kevin Bacon in a frozen yogurt store, but couldn’t be sure. A Kevin Bacon sighting probably wouldn’t impress Addie anyway, but Maggie Hall was different.
Her supervisor walked into the bathroom with a sour face. ‘You can go now. Make sure you sign your hours sheet before you leave.’
‘Okay,’ said Dylan politely. The woman had been a total bitch all night, but Dylan refused to let it bother her. This job had been way better than working nights at the greasy chicken shop downtown, trying to avoid the slick on the floor and the even more oily owner.
Dylan picked up her bag and put the gift bag with the Givenchy shoes in it over her shoulder. ‘Thanks, it was fun.’
The woman looked at her and made a face. ‘Being stuck in a bathroom with needy celebrities bitching about each other and fighting over the mirror was fun? You’re nuts.’
