Glitter Baby

  “Kissy?”

  “Is he gone?” A loud whisper came from behind the shower curtain.

  “Who?”

  Kissy pushed back the curtain and climbed out. “Somebody had to use the facility. I think it was Frank, who is a base pig, in my opinion.”

  They resettled in their old spots. Kissy tucked several wayward licorice curls behind her ear and looked at Fleur thoughtfully. “You ready to talk yet?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not exactly blind to the fact that I’m sharin’ this bathroom with a woman who used to be one of the most famous models in the world, as well as a promising new actress. A woman who disappeared off the face of God’s earth after some interesting rumors about her association with one of our great country’s truly outstanding hunks. I’m not obtuse.”

  “I didn’t think you were.” Fleur picked at the edge of the bathmat with her fingernail.

  “Well? Are we friends or not? I’ve told you some of the very best parts of my life story, and you haven’t told me one thing about yours.”

  “We’ve just met.” As soon as she said it, Fleur knew that it was wrong and hurtful, even though she wasn’t exactly sure why.

  Kissy’s eyes filled with tears, which made them look melty and soft, like blue gumdrops left too long in the sun. “Do you think that makes a difference? This is a lifelong friendship being formed right now. There’s got to be trust.” She brushed her tears away, picked up the champagne, and took a swig directly from the bottle. Then she looked Fleur straight in the eye and held the bottle out to her.

  Fleur thought about all the secrets locked inside her for so long. She saw her loneliness, her fear, and the self-respect she’d lost along the way. All she had to show for the past three years—nearly three and a half—was an eclectic university education. Kissy was offering her a way out. But honesty was dangerous, and Fleur hadn’t let herself take a risk for a very long time.

  Slowly she reached for the bottle and took a long swallow. “It’s sort of a complicated story,” she said finally. “I guess it started before I was born…”

  It took Fleur nearly two hours to tell it all. Sometime between her trip to Greece with Belinda and her first modeling assignment, she and Kissy escaped the pounding on the bathroom door by moving to Fleur’s hotel room. Kissy curled up on one of the double beds while Fleur propped herself against the headboard of the other. She kept the champagne bottle that was helping her through the story balanced on her chest. Kissy occasionally interrupted with pithy, one-word character assassinations of the people involved, but Fleur remained almost detached. Champagne definitely helped, she decided, when you were spilling your sordid secrets.

  “That’s heartbreaking!” Kissy exclaimed, when Fleur finally finished. “I don’t know how you can tell that story without falling apart.”

  “I’m cried out, Kissy. If you live with it long enough, even high tragedy gets to be mundane.”

  “Like Oedipus Rex.” Kissy dabbed at her eyes. “I was in the chorus when I was in college. We must have performed that play for every high school in the state.” She flipped onto her back. “There’s a master’s thesis in here somewhere.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Do you remember the characteristics of a tragic hero? He’s a person of high stature brought down by a tragic flaw, like hubris, the sin of pride. He loses everything. Then he achieves a catharsis, a cleansing through his suffering. Or her suffering,” she said pointedly.

  “Me?”

  “Why not? You had high stature, and you sure have been brought down.”

  “What’s my tragic flaw?” Fleur asked.

  Kissy thought for a moment. “Shitty parents.”

  Late the next morning, after showers, aspirin, and room-service coffee, they heard a knock at the door. Kissy opened it and emitted a loud squeal. Fleur looked up just in time to see the Belle of the Confederacy hurl herself into Simon Kale’s forbidding arms.

  The three of them had breakfast in the revolving dining room on top of Munich’s Olympia Tower, where they could gaze out over the Alps, sixty-five miles away. As they ate, Fleur heard the story of Kissy and Simon’s long-standing friendship. They’d been introduced not long after Kissy’s arrival in New York by one of Simon’s classmates at Juilliard. Simon Kale, Fleur discovered, was a classically trained musician and as menacing as Santa Claus.

  He laughed as he wiped one corner of his mouth with his napkin. “You should have seen Fleur taming King Barry with her story about having a venereal disease. She was magnificent.”

  “And you didn’t try to help her out, did you?” Kissy gave him a none-too-gentle punch in the arm. “Instead you gave her that I-eat-white-girls-for-breakfast look, just to amuse yourself.”

  Simon acted wounded. “I haven’t eaten a white girl in years, Kissy, and I’m hurt that you would suggest such a perversion.”

  “Simon’s discreetly gay,” Kissy informed Fleur. And then, in a loud whisper, “I don’t know about you, Fleurinda, but I regard homosexuality as a personal insult.”

  By the time breakfast was over, Fleur decided she liked Simon Kale. Beneath his threatening facade lay a kind and gentle man. As she watched his delicate gestures and finicky mannerisms, she’d have bet every penny of her meager income that he would have been more comfortable in the body of a ninety-pound weakling. Maybe that was why she liked him. They both lived in bodies that didn’t feel like home.

  When they got back to the hotel, Simon excused himself, and Kissy and Fleur set out for Barry’s suite. It had been cleaned up since last night’s party, and Barry was once again in residence, nervously pacing the carpet as they entered. He was so glad to see Kissy that he barely listened to her breathlessly convoluted lie about why she was late, and several minutes elapsed before he even noticed Fleur. He made it obvious with a less than subtle glance toward the door that her presence was no longer required. Fleur pretended not to notice.

  Kissy leaned forward and whispered something in his ear. As Barry listened, his expression grew increasingly horrified. When Kissy finished, she gazed down at the floor like a naughty child.

  Barry looked at Fleur. He looked at Kissy. Then he looked at Fleur again. “What is this?” he cried. “A friggin’ epidemic?”

  Kissy’s two weeks of vacation from the gallery ended, and she and Fleur said a tearful good-bye at Heathrow, with Fleur promising to telephone that evening at Parker Dayton’s expense. When she returned to the hotel, she was depressed for the first time since she’d started her job. She already missed Kissy’s quirky sense of humor and even quirkier view of life.

  A few days later Parker called with a job offer. He wanted her to work for him in New York at nearly double her current salary. Panic-stricken, she hung up the telephone and called Kissy at the gallery.

  “I don’t know why you’re so surprised, Fleurinda,” Kissy said. “You’re on the phone with him two or three times a day, and he’s as impressed with your work as everybody else. He may be slime mold, but he’s not stupid.”

  “I—I’m not ready to go back to New York. It’s too soon.”

  The distinct sound of a snort traveled through three thousand miles of ocean cable. “You’re not going to start whining again, are you? Self-pity kills your sex drive.”

  “My sex drive is nonexistent.”

  “See. What did I tell you?”

  Fleur twisted the phone cord. “It’s not that simple, Kissy.”

  “Do you want to be back where you were a month ago? Ostrich time is over, Fleurinda. It’s time to return to the real world.”

  Kissy made it sound so easy, but how long could Fleur stay in New York before the press discovered her? And she still didn’t like Parker. What if her job with him didn’t work out? What would she do then?

  Her stomach rumbled, and she realized she hadn’t had anything to eat since the night before. Another change this job had made in her life. Her jeans were already too loose, and her hair had grown down ove
r her ears. Everything was changing.

  She hung up the telephone and walked over to the hotel window where she pushed back the drapery to gaze down on the wet Glasgow street. A jogger dodged a taxi in the rain. She remembered when she’d been a dedicated runner like that, going out regardless of weather. The bravest, the fastest, the strongest…Now she doubted she could run a city block without stopping to catch her breath.

  “Hey, Fleur, you seen Kyle?” It was Frank, a can of Budweiser already opened at nine o’clock in the morning. Fleur grabbed her parka and brushed past him. She rushed out into the hallway, into the elevator, through the well-dressed crowd of businessmen in the lobby.

  The rain was an icy January drizzle, and by the time she reached the corner, it had trickled off the stubby ends of her hair and under the neck of her parka. As she crossed the street, her feet squished in her cheap wet sneakers. They had no cushioning, no thick padding to support her arches and protect the balls of her feet.

  She pulled her hands out of her pockets and gazed up at the steel-gray sky. One long block stretched before her. Just one block. Could she make it that far?

  She began to run.

  Chapter 18

  Kissy’s apartment sat above an Italian restaurant in the Village. The interior decorating looked just like her: lollipop colors, a collection of stuffed teddy bears, and a poster of Tom Selleck taped to the bathroom door. As Kissy was showing Fleur how the makeshift shower worked, a bright pink lip print on the poster caught Fleur’s eye. “Kissy Sue Christie, is that your lipstick on Tom Selleck?”

  “So what if it is?”

  “You could at least have aimed for his mouth.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Fleur laughed. Kissy had taken the fact that Fleur would be her roommate for granted, and Fleur was more than grateful. Despite her success with Neon Lynx, her self-confidence was shaky at best, and she was plagued with doubts about her decision to return to New York.

  Parker begrudgingly gave her a week to get settled before she had to report to work, and she forced herself to leave the safe haven of the apartment and get reacquainted with the city she’d once loved. It was early February, and New York was at its worst, but she found it beautiful. Best of all, no one recognized her.

  She ran every morning that week, only a few blocks before she had to walk to catch her breath, but each day she felt stronger. Sometimes she passed a place she and Belinda had visited together, and she felt a sharp, bittersweet pang. But there was no room in her new life for misplaced sentimentality. She was carving out her own future, and she wouldn’t take any dirty laundry from the past with her. She tested herself by sitting through an Errol Flynn retrospective, but she didn’t feel anything for the dashing swashbuckler on the screen.

  The day before Fleur had to start work, Kissy threw out all her clothes. “You’re not going to wear those vile rags, Fleur Savagar. You look like a bag lady.”

  “I like looking like a bag lady! Give me my clothes back.”

  “Too late.”

  Fleur ended up trading in her old jeans for ones that fit her slimmer shape and bought a supply of funky tops to go with them—a Mexican peasant shirt, an old varsity letter sweater, and some turtlenecks. Kissy frowned and left a copy of Dress for Success conspicuously displayed on the coffee table.

  “You’re wasting your time, Magnolia Blossom,” Fleur said. “I’m working for Parker Dayton, not Xerox. The entertainment world has a more casual dress code.”

  “There’s casual and there’s dowdy.”

  Fleur could peel away only so many layers at a time. “Go kiss Tom Selleck.”

  It didn’t take her long to discover Parker wanted his pound of flesh for the generous salary she’d forced him to pay. Her days blended into nights and spilled over into the weekends. She visited Barry Noy’s purple-painted Tudor in the Hamptons to console him on his loss of Kissy. She wrote press releases, studied contracts, and fielded calls from promoters. The business, finance, and law classes she’d sat in on immediately began to pay off. She discovered she had a talent for negotiation.

  She’d known she couldn’t remain anonymous forever, but by dressing inconspicuously and staying away from anyplace connected with the fashion world, she avoided attracting attention for almost six weeks. In March, however, her luck ran out. The Daily News announced that former Glitter Baby Fleur Savagar was back in New York working at the Parker Dayton Agency.

  The phone calls started coming in, and a few reporters showed up at the office. But all of them wanted the Glitter Baby back, signing perfume contracts, going to marvelous parties, and talking about her rumored affair with Jake Koranda. “I have a new life now,” she said politely, “and I won’t be making any further comments.”

  Try as they might, she refused to elaborate.

  A photographer appeared to capture the Glitter Baby’s whirling cloud of streaky blond hair and couture fashion. They got baggy blue jeans and a Yankees cap. After two weeks, the story died of boredom. The fabulous Glitter Baby was yesterday’s news.

  Over the next three months, Fleur learned who the record producers were and managed to keep track of the television executives as they played musical chairs at the networks. She was smart, dependable; she honored her commitments, and people began to ask for her. By midsummer she’d fallen in love with the entire business of making stars.

  “It’s great to pull other people’s strings instead of having my own pulled,” she told Kissy one hot Sunday afternoon in August as they sat on a bench in Washington Square eating dripping ice cream cones. The park held its usual colorful complement of characters: tourists, leftover hippies, skinny kids with ghetto blasters hoisted on their shoulders.

  After six months in New York, Fleur’s hair swung in a jaw-length blunt cut that shimmered in the summer sun. She was tan and too slim for the shorts that sat on her hip-bones. Kissy frowned over the top of her ice cream cone. “We are getting you some clothes that aren’t made out of denim.”

  “Don’t start. We’re talking about my job, not fashion.”

  “Wearing something decent won’t turn you back into the Glitter Baby.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “You think looking good will somehow ruin everything you’re building for yourself.” She adjusted her red plastic barrettes, which were shaped like lips. “You hardly ever look in a mirror. A few seconds to slick on lipstick, another couple of seconds to run a comb through your hair. You are a world-class champion at avoiding your reflection.”

  “You look at yours enough for both of us.”

  But Kissy was on a roll, and Fleur couldn’t distract her. “You’re fighting a losing battle, Fleurinda. The old Fleur Savagar can’t hold a candle to the new one. You’re going to be twenty-four next month, and your face has something it didn’t have when you were nineteen. Even those disgusting clothes can’t hide the fact that you have a better body now than when you were modeling. I hate to be the bearer of tragic news, but you’ve turned from boringly gorgeous into a classic beauty.”

  “You Southerners do love your drama.”

  “Okay, no more nagging.” Kissy circled the double-decker mound of raspberry ripple with her tongue. “I’m glad you love your job. You even seem to love the ugly parts, like having Parker for a boss and dealing with Barry Noy.”

  Fleur caught a dab of mint chocolate chip before it dropped on her shorts. “It almost scares me how much. I love the wheeling and dealing and the fact that something is always happening. Every time I head off another crisis, I feel like one of the nuns just pasted a gold star next to my name.”

  “You’re turning into one of those awful overachievers.”

  “It feels good.” She gazed across the square. “When I was a kid, I thought my father would let me go home if I could be the best at everything. After it all fell apart, I lost faith in myself.” She hesitated. “I think…maybe I’m starting to get that back.” Her self-confidence was too frail to hold up for examination
, even from her best friend, and she wished she hadn’t been so open. Fortunately Kissy’s thoughts took a different path.

  “I don’t understand how you can’t miss acting.”

  “You saw Eclipse. I was never going to win any Academy Awards.” Unlike Jake and his screenplay.

  “You were great in that part,” Kissy insisted.

  Fleur made a face. “I had a couple of good scenes. The rest were barely adequate. I never felt comfortable.” In deference to Kissy’s feelings, she didn’t mention that she also found the whole process of filmmaking, with all the standing around, boring beyond belief.

  “You put your heart into modeling, Fleurinda.”

  “I put my determination into it, not my heart.”

  “Either way, you were the best.”

  “Thanks to a lucky combination of chromosomes. Modeling never had anything to do with who I was.” She drew in her legs to save them from amputation by a skateboard. One of the drug dealers stopped talking to stare. She gazed off into space. “The night Alexi and I played out our smutty little scene, he said I was nothing more than a pretty, oversized decoration. He said I couldn’t really do anything.”

  “Alexi Savagar is a whacko prick.”

  Fleur smiled at hearing Kissy dismiss Alexi so inelegantly. “But he was also right. I didn’t know who I was. I guess I still don’t, not entirely, but at least I’m on the right path. I spent three and a half years running from myself. Granted, I acquired a world-class university education along the way, but I’m not running anymore.” And she wasn’t. Something had changed inside her. Something that finally made her want to fight for herself.

  Kissy pitched the end of her cone into the trash. “I wish I had your drive.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re always juggling your schedule at the gallery so you can get your hours in and still hit the auditions. You go to class in the evenings. The parts will come, Magnolia. I’ve talked to a lot of people about you.”