Starstruck

  “Seriously, though,” she said. “I do feel weird about it. Do you think we should keep it up?”

  “It’s like my manager said. It’s crazy not to.” He gestured to the magazine. “You can’t buy publicity like this.”

  “But it’s a lie. And it’s sort of ruining my friendship with Kate.”

  He gazed down at his hands, silent for a long moment. “But we’re not lying, Carmen. We’re just not denying our relationship. We’re not commenting. Let people fill in the blanks for themselves. Anyway, it’s not your fault that Kate’s mad.” Luke reached out and patted her ankle. “It’s mine. It was always mine.”

  “I don’t like dishonesty,” Carmen said. “And isn’t holding hands for a bunch of paparazzi basically lying?”

  “Well, not with words?” Luke said. “Look, I do feel weird about that. I get it. But this is simply good business. You and me, we both want the same thing, and we’ve both got a lot to prove, and if pretending there’s more between us than friendship is going to help us out, then that’s what we need to do. I ruined a great relationship with a girl I really liked—I can’t back out now. This is helping the movie, too. And we want it to be huge. We need it to be.”

  “Of course, but—”

  “And it’s not like you haven’t pretended to date someone before,” Luke interrupted.

  She frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  Luke opened her refrigerator again and this time took out a Coke. “You let everyone think that you and Josh Hills were dating. That you had that romantic holiday weekend in Ojai.”

  “But that was different,” Carmen protested. “It was a favor to Josh. He didn’t want everyone finding out that the romantic weekend was really between him and his boyfriend, Juan.”

  Luke popped open the soda and shrugged. “Okay, whatever. So think of this as a favor to yourself. To your career. And to this movie.”

  “And to you?” she asked.

  Luke poked her. “It’s a mutual favor,” he said. “Loooover.”

  “If you don’t quit that, I’m going to kill you,” Carmen said. Then she sighed and gazed into her tea. “But you’re right, I guess.”

  “I’m always right,” Luke smirked. “Now get your clothes on. We have a date with some paparazzi.”

  Carmen laughed. In a strange way, she could almost find the fake relationship comforting. In the past when she’d been actually dating someone, she could never be sure if the guys really liked her or were just using her for money, or connections, or both. (She’d made a rule for herself that she wasn’t allowed to date any struggling musicians, after falling hard for one who’d turned out to be more interested in her father than her.) Whereas now she knew Luke was using her, just as she was using him. There was a simplicity to it. And a twisted honesty.

  She got up and picked out a pair of skinny jeans from the tangle on the bedroom floor and located a pretty, ruffled top that was miraculously still on its hanger. She held them up in front of her as she stood before the mirror. It was important to have a decent outfit—casual but pretty; thoughtful but not studied—because she’d likely be looking at it in photographs for the next week. (She’d learned that lesson from Halle Berry, who had yet to live down the giant sweater-poncho she’d been photographed wearing back in March.)

  “Did you get lost back there?” Luke called.

  “I’ll be out in a sec,” Carmen said. She slipped into her clothes and then turned sideways in the mirror. Yes, the outfit would do. She applied a coat of lip gloss and brushed a little mascara onto her thick lashes. Her hair had dried into soft black waves.

  She gave the mirror one last check. She looked … good enough. She was coming off a grueling shoot, though—no need to look like she was stepping off a runway.

  She pulled her long raven hair around her shoulder and walked out to the living room. “How do I look?”

  “Perfect.” Luke smiled. “Ready, loooover?” he asked.

  “Dead,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “You’re totally dead.”

  He laughed and jumped down the trailer steps. She followed him down more slowly—there would be no jumping in her Lanvin platforms—and found herself in a warm early fall evening. The sky was streaked with blue and lavender, and she could still smell the roses that they’d used during today’s shoot, for the scene in which Carmen and Luke, aka Julia and Roman, get it on in a lush garden. (It had struck Carmen as more than a little funny—would people in a dark, post-apocalyptic future still cultivate roses? She sort of doubted it.)

  She and Luke were quiet as they walked through the studio lot. It was a giant, walled compound on the edge of West Hollywood, housing soundstages, warehouses, parking lots, sets, and craft-and-prop shops. It was like its own city, Carmen thought, run by a government of studio executives and populated by everyone from A-list stars to Z-list PAs. But it was a ghost town tonight.

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the walls, the real city was gearing up for the evening. New York might fancy itself the city that never sleeps, but it sure had competition with L.A. when it came to partying.

  “Well,” Luke said as they approached the studio gates, “ready for this?”

  The paparazzi were lining the fence that blocked off the lot.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Carmen said. She took a deep breath. She felt Luke’s hand wrap its way around hers.

  They emerged onto the sidewalk and immediately dozens of flashbulbs went off, making thousands of bright sparks. “Carmen,” someone yelled. “Carmen Curtis, give us a smile!”

  Luke squeezed her fingers. “Looover,” he whispered, grinning from ear to ear.

  She dug her nails into his palm. Smiling, keeping her mouth shut, she hissed, “Seriously, I am going to murder you.”

  He laughed, thoroughly pleased with himself. He was like a little boy, Carmen thought; he was probably going to keep beating that dead horse of a joke forever.

  She began to see spots from all the flashes. Who was going to buy all these pictures of her and Luke? It wasn’t like there were an infinite number of celebrity magazines.

  She tried not to squint. Instead of stopping, the flashes only seemed to increase in number. “What’s going on?” she asked. “What’s all the fuss? This is insane!”

  “We’re bloody famous,” Luke whispered, “that’s what.”

  But then Carmen began to hear another name being yelled.

  She turned.

  “Cassandra,” yelled a male voice. “Cassandra, over here!”

  And that was when Carmen saw her mother. Cassandra Curtis was walking toward them, stunning and exotic in a jade-green flowing dress and gold goddess sandals. Her arms were open to her daughter.

  “Honey,” she called above the clamor. “I know craft service is awful—I don’t care what they say. Come with me. I’ve got a roast at home in the oven.” She was smiling her warm, beautiful smile, and almost instantly Carmen felt herself pulled in by the mesmerizing force of her mother. Cassandra Curtis was like a magnet. A sun around which everyone agreed to orbit.

  “Luke—” Carmen said.

  “I’m going to go out for a steak,” he said. “I think these guys have gotten what they needed. Almost.” And then he leaned in and kissed her—lightly, gently—on the cheek. “See you tomorrow.”

  She smiled at him. He mouthed the word “looover” and vanished.

  Still the flashes were exploding all around them.

  Carmen turned back to her mother.

  “Darling,” Cassandra said. “Shall we?” She motioned to the waiting town car.

  Carmen nodded. She was happy to see her; she really was. But as she heard the paparazzi calling “Cassandra, Cassandra!” she realized, with what she had to admit was a measure of annoyance, that she’d better not forget who the real star of the Curtis family was.

  7

  KNOW YOUR LINE

  As a gift to himself, Trevor poured a packet of raw sugar into his maté latte. (His nutritionist had put suga
r on the NO list.) But he felt he deserved it, because along with his hot drink, his new assistant, Michelle—or was it Melissa?—had just handed him the ratings for the first three weeks of The Fame Game, and the audience numbers were even bigger than he had expected. It had even beat out the new cop show starring some gorgeous blue-eyed English actor and Genevieve Waters, the buxom redhead who used to date the head of Hamptons Studios.

  Not too shabby, Trevor thought, smirking. Not too shabby at all.

  There was a knock on his door and his assistant poked her head in. “Matt LeBlanc wants to know if you’re playing tennis weekend?” Michelle/Melissa said.

  “Tell him I have the court at eleven,” Trevor said. “And I need another sugar packet.”

  “I’ll be right back, sir,” Michelle/Melissa said, nodding pertly.

  He liked how she called him “sir.” He should learn her name. Or else he could just call her Melissa and wait to see if she corrected him. (Though maybe she wouldn’t, even if he was wrong. Maybe she’d be too afraid to contradict her powerful, important boss—a thought that made him smile.)

  He stood at the window and did a few knee bends as he sipped his drink. (His trainer had told him to take advantage of spare moments like this. “In every hour there are at least twelve minutes you could be working out,” she always said. “Every moment you’re not glued to your desk is a moment you could be increasing your fitness.”)

  Despite the Fame Game’s excellent ratings, Trevor had to acknowledge that not everything was perfect. For one thing, his purported star, Madison Parker, was suddenly unavailable for filming for thirty hours each week. It seemed to him like a pretty stiff sentence for stealing some silly necklace. Shoplifting was practically an extracurricular activity for young Hollywood.

  Carmen, too, was turning out to be hard to pin down these days. He’d pushed for her to get the starring role in The End of Love, and now it was turning around to bite him in the ass. Be careful what you wish for, he thought, as he did ten reps of a deep squat.

  And speaking of things biting him in the ass, Carmen was still playing along with the Luke Kelly business. Those two had quickly become a genuine power couple. When Trevor and Veronica Bliss had released the story about Luke Kelly secretly dating a Fame Game girl, he’d had no idea it would escalate to this level. He was looking for a quick buzz before the premiere, and suddenly he’d ended up with Carmen engaging in a very public relationship with a movie star who had no intention of stepping in front of PopTV cameras. Trevor had tried his best to convince Luke’s representation that appearing on The Fame Game wouldn’t tarnish Luke’s acting career, but they weren’t buying it. He’d gotten exactly one scene out of them—a meal at Stecco that would be airing in a couple weeks. He’d cut and rearranged it enough to make it feel romantic and hopeful, and his music supervisor had found a fantastic love song for it. Trevor had even planted a shot of Kate looking forlorn.

  Trevor knew this meant he’d have to be a little creative. He already had his love triangle; he just needed to find a replacement for Luke. After all, in his show the men were interchangeable. A guy had clearly come between Kate and Carmen, and luckily for Trevor, they rarely referred to him by name.

  But a half-baked, heavily edited love triangle wasn’t going to carry the show all season; Trevor was going to have to rethink its focus somewhat. He had six strong episodes done, but now he had to figure out how the remaining six would play out.

  Gaby could never be the central character. She was sweet, but she was vacant and hard to relate to. Kate Hayes had definite potential—she had the fresh-faced innocence, the whole pretty-girl-next-door thing that had made such a star of Jane Roberts. But while Kate was definitely sympathetic, she wasn’t exactly charismatic. There was a chance she’d uncover some latent confidence, some hint of star power, in the upcoming shows he was booking for her, assuming she didn’t pass out from anxiety first. The stage fright would be a part of her arc, of course. He’d been planning to work it in ever since he’d seen her play at the premiere. But she needed to deal with it. And he wasn’t about to let her sign a label deal until she did. He’d mapped out her career trajectory and he couldn’t have her skipping steps—it would all unfold in a way that worked for the show. But still, he needed someone with magnetism. He needed someone the camera loved—and who loved the camera right back in equal measure. What he really needed was Madison Parker.

  He stopped doing squats when Michelle/Melissa slipped in with his other sugar packet. He sat down at his desk again, his pulse pleasingly elevated. Yes, he missed Madison’s shameless camera-hogging. She’d been such a reliable source of drama for two-plus seasons, and now she just wasn’t pulling her weight.

  The footage from her first day at Lost Paws was perfect—he loved the hissy fit she’d pitched when faced with all those filthy cages—but he couldn’t spin a dramatic and glamorous story out of a starlet’s janitorial duties. Plenty of Fame Game viewers loved to hate Madison Parker, but they weren’t going to stick around to watch her scoop poop for a whole season. Schadenfreude only took you so far before it got boring.

  What he needed most right now was to get to the bottom of the Charlie Wardell story. Madison’s father had been a big part of the first few episodes, and now he was suddenly gone. Trevor could hardly let him vanish without addressing it, which meant that Madison was going to have to talk about what happened to him. On film.

  He got up again and paced the room. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what had really happened. He didn’t know the details (even Sophia hadn’t cracked when he tried to pull the truth out of her), but it was obvious to him that Madison was covering for her father in some way. He didn’t know why it wasn’t obvious to everyone else. Then again, he had spent years painting Madison as a spoiled brat. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that people believed it.

  He jotted some notes onto a legal pad. Madison would say that Charlie had “gone away for a while.” Her evasiveness would cause all sorts of speculation among PopTV viewers, which always worked to the show’s advantage. And then, just maybe, he could figure out a way to suggest a connection between Charlie’s disappearance and Madison’s theft. Maybe he’d spin it so that she didn’t seem like a greedy little starlet, but instead, a poor, abandoned daughter. Acting out in her grief and anger.

  No one would ever come out and say there was a definite connection (because no one knew what had been going on in Madison’s head), but through careful editing, he could certainly suggest it....

  He smiled. Yes, this could be something. He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. If one of his stars was going to get arrested and charged with a crime, he was going to find a way to make it work for the show. Find a way to make a thief sympathetic.

  The only problem was Madison herself. Would she do what he wanted? She had gone through a lot to take the fall for Charlie, and she clearly didn’t want the truth to get out. He looked at the clock. Well, he’d have a chance to gauge her reaction in ten, nine, eight …

  Madison opened the door on the count of two. She was immaculately dressed in a chic little navy number with a white collar. She looked, almost, as if she were headed to a courtroom again.

  “Madison,” he said, offering her his biggest smile, “you look like a million bucks.” (And she’s probably spent close to that to look that way, he thought.)

  “Were you exercising in here?” she asked bluntly.

  Trevor smiled. “What makes you ask that?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “It smells like you were.”

  Trevor made a mental note to throw away the hippie natural deodorant his nutritionist had given him and go back to using Old Spice. “Anyway,” he said. “Nice to see you. How have you been?”

  “I think you can imagine,” she said. “Instead of attending launch parties for Beyoncé’s new perfume, I’m giving flea baths.”

  Trevor chuckled. “Yeah, that’s kind of a bummer, isn’t it? For all of us.”

  Madison raised
a freshly plucked eyebrow. “I don’t see how you’re suffering.”

  Trevor picked up his Gripmaster hand exerciser and squeezed it. “Well, I can’t build much of a story around you grooming dogs and cleaning cages, Madison. You look great in a pair of wellies, but custodial work isn’t that exciting to watch.” Plus, Ryan Tucker, the Lost Paws volunteer coordinator, had been downright obstructionist about filming.

  “Yeah, well, it’s not fun to do, either.”

  “It’s too bad you had to go and steal that necklace, isn’t it?” Trevor said coolly.

  Madison didn’t answer; she gazed out the window and pretended as if she hadn’t heard.

  Oh, Mad, he thought. You think feigning deafness is going to work? “I’ll tell you what I want,” he said, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “I want to show you talking about what really happened the morning after the premiere.”

  Madison crossed her arms and gazed at him, her blue eyes steely. “You know what happened. It’s all over the news. I’m pretty sure you can read.”

  Trevor leaned back again and put his hands behind his head. “Madison, please. I’m not dumb, and more importantly, you’re not dumb. What really happened? Where’s your father?”

  When Madison didn’t answer, Trevor gazed up to the ceiling. “Let’s see,” he said. “He had a psychotic break and he’s now at Beverly Hills Psychiatric, but you don’t want the world to know about your family’s history of mental illness so you’re covering it up. Or maybe he wasn’t really your father; he was just some actor you and Sophia found because you felt like your story line needed a little more meat. If so, kudos—that was awesome. You had us all going there. And here I was, thinking you can’t act! Or maybe …” Trevor leaned forward, staring directly into Madison’s eyes. “It’s really Charlie who took the necklace, and you, for some completely bizarre and incomprehensible reason, are taking the blame for him....”

  “You can make up stories all you want,” Madison said stiffly. “You already got me to humiliate myself on camera at Lost Paws. And if you were on top of your story arcs, you could keep doing it. I’m sure everyone would love to watch me get my comeuppance. But I’m not going to talk about it, all right?”