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“Is it?”
She wrote something down, then looked back up at him. “What about love—does that matter?”
“I’ve been married four times. I’d say it matters to me. ”
“And divorced four times,” she responded, maintaining a steady gaze.
The question rolled off him like warm water. “I’m an incurable romantic, I guess. Just haven’t found the right woman. Maybe she’ll be reading this article. Now, what do you say we talk about my movie? We can get back to all this personal stuff later on … maybe over drinks?” He smiled, knowing there would be no later, no cozy pair of cocktails. The truth was, he didn’t have much to say about real life. It wasn’t the world he lived in.
Julian sped down a residential street, going much too fast. As he approached the imposing entrance to Bel Air, he saw a couple standing on the side of the street.
The woman gasped, pointed. “Oh, my God, Sidney, it’s—”
Julian flashed the lady his trademark grin, then hit the gas, following the winding, stop-and-go traffic into Century City. There, he pulled up in front of a grand high-rise building and parked at a metered spot.
A doorman rushed out, held the door open. “Good evening, Mr. True. ”
Julian patted his pocket, found it empty. Damn. He was so used to other people picking up the tab, he regularly left his wallet at home. “I don’t have any money with me, kid. I’ll tell Val to tip you, okay?”
“S-Sure, Mr. True … and thank you. ”
Julian followed the doorman through the ornate marble-paneled lobby and into the elevator.
At the penthouse, the doors opened. Julian’s agent, Val Lightner, lounged in the open doorway of his condo.
No doubt he was waiting for his most famous client, waiting to pop the champagne.
“Hey, Juli,” Val said, lifting his martini glass in a salute that upset his precarious balance. He staggered against the door frame. “How’d the interview go? I heard they sent you a baby reporter who couldn’t talk for an hour after she got back to the office. ”
Julian grinned. “I think she wants to bear my children. ”
“The phones have been ringing off the hook since the screening. If you were any hotter, you’d need asbestos underwear. ”
They’d been friends forever, Julian and Val; they were cut from the same cloth. Val had made his bones in this business a long time ago, with the world-famous Angel DeMarco, an actor who, for years, had been called the young Robert De Niro, and who—at the peak of his game—had walked away from it all, creating in absentia a legend greater than anything he could have accomplished on screen. Val had wielded the power of Angel DeMarco to create a world-class career for Julian True.
Val grinned lazily and pushed a long, cornsilk-blond lock of hair away from his face. “Come on in, superstar. There’s a babe with your name on her. ”
Julian followed Val into the condo, where a raucous party was in full swing. Movie stars mingled with wanna-bes; you could tell them apart by the eyes. The stars looked confident; the wanna-bes looked desperate, starvelings standing at a banquet table where they’d never be fed.
The place had the tasteful decor of a fraternity house. No paintings, no knickknacks, no rugs. Val had bought the unit, picked a few things to sit on, and called it home. But then, Val didn’t need to decorate. In this town, failure to do what you could easily afford had a cachet all its own.
“I need a drink,” Julian said to no one in particular, and within seconds someone handed him a drink. It didn’t matter what was in the glass, as long as it had a kick. He downed it and glided into the room. He knew that every pair of eyes was on him. The men wanted to be him and the women wanted to sleep with him. And why not
? He was on top of the world. There was no perfume like success. He moved through the crowd, laughing and talking, his gaze constantly searching the room.
He saw her on the sofa in the living room, a stunning blonde in a barely-there white dress. Perfect. He strode over and sat down beside her.
His hand slid familiarly along her thigh, and damn, she felt good. “Hiya, darlin’. You’re the most beautiful woman in the room, but I guess you know that. ”
She giggled, and at the movement, her grapefruit breasts—the best that money could buy—threatened to pop out of her plunging neckline.
“I’m Margot,” she purred. “Margot LaMere. You like that name? Val made it up for me. ” She sniffed and rubbed her runny, pink-tipped nose, then she leaned forward and grabbed her drink so fast that amber liquid sloshed over the rim and splashed on her dress. “I got great reviews in my high-school production of Our Town. ”
Julian felt an unexpected—and unwelcome—flash of pity for the girl. There were so many women like her in Los Angeles.
When he looked closely, he saw that she wasn’t that pretty. Her hair had been bleached so many times it looked like straw, and she was dangerously thin. Her collarbone stood out in mountainous relief against her tanned, sunken flesh. And beneath a dozen layers of mascara, her brown eyes held a lifetime’s desperation. Girls like her landed in Hollyweird every day, butterflies in search of fame’s golden flower. In a few years’ time, she’d probably be broke and alone and strung out on designer drugs.
It was not the sort of reality Julian liked to consider. He yanked his hand back and lurched to his feet. “I’ll be right back, babe. ”
