Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [47]
“It’s time to go, then.” India waved from the deck to the two guards idling on the strip of beach in front of the house, occupying themselves by spinning pebbles across the waves. They waved in reply and headed back toward the house.
“Well,” she remarked with a sigh, walking towards the door, “this is it.” She turned for a last look at the pretty room. The white sofas were crumpled where they had been sitting and ashtrays and empty glasses littered the tables. The big windows framed only the blue-gray ocean and a cloudless sky. “You’d better say good-bye,” she whispered.
Paris and Venetia gave the room a last lingering look. It seemed different now it was no longer theirs, thought Paris, a bit shabbier, a little bit tired—the home of a stranger as a prospective buyer might see it.
“I can’t bear to go into Jenny’s bedroom,” whispered Venetia.
“Nor I.” Paris turned away.
“I wonder which Jenny it was,” said India, locking the door behind them, “who left Beverly Hills to take that last ride down Malibu Canyon. I’d like to believe it was the indiscreet, sexy Jenny heading for an assignation with some new man.”
“No! It was Jenny in a romantic mood, longing for a glimpse of the full moon on the ocean.” Venetia was sure of it.
Paris was silent. Or maybe, she thought as they walked away, it was the fading movie star of the slightly blurred beauty whose career was going downhill and for whose mismanaged life there seemed no future—except at the bottom of Malibu Canyon.
5
The young valet at the parking lot on Rodeo who looked as if he should be manning the life-saving station on Zuma Beach flipped Rory Grant his keys and gave him a winning smile. One day he, too, would make it big like that; it could happen, you know, this was Hollywood.
Rory sauntered down the street, checking his appearance in Bijan’s window as he passed. He looked good, the all-American—or maybe all-Californian—guy with his hair casually longish, casually “sun streaked” and springy, cut so that he could run his casual hand through it in the engaging gesture known to millions of viewers; faded blue jeans, Nike tennis sneakers, expensive Italian polo shirt from Jerry Magnin, and a Missoni sweater tied by the sleeves and slung casually across his shoulders.
He wasn’t sure about the sweater—did enough people know that it was Missoni and was almost too expensive? Would he have been better off with the plain blue cashmere or maybe the Armani? What the hell, the sweater had cost enough—more than his dad had earned in a month, more than a lot of people earned in a month. He checked his appearance again in the shop window…. You’re looking good, Rory, real good, like the superstar you are—almost. That’s what he wanted to talk to Bill about.
Bill was waiting at a table in the Cafe Rodeo. He’d been waiting for twenty minutes and figured that Rory would be exactly half an hour late—that’s what they usually were when they reached this point of success; after that it was anybody’s guess. They had been known to turn suddenly polite and easygoing, but that was rare.
“How’re ya doin’, Bill?” Rory acknowledged various greetings from around the room and flung himself into the chair opposite Bill.
“Pretty good.” This was going to be a complaint, Bill could see it coming. There was a dissatisfied scowl in Rory’s unsmiling greeting.
“Salad,” said Rory to the waitress, “avocado, shrimp—tell them to add some alfalfa sprouts and some wheat germ. And Perrier.” Ever since Jenny had put him on his diet, whittling down his hundred and sixty-five pounds to a muscular hundred and fifty, Rory had been careful what he ate. It was a pity, thought Bill, that he wasn’t as careful with what he took. That perpetual sniff wasn’t becoming to television’s newest star.
“Ya should cut out the coke, Rory,” he advised. “You’re fucking up the membranes.”
“We’re not here to talk about my membranes,” snapped Rory, checking the room to see who was with whom. “We’re here to talk about money.”
So that was it. The salary complaint. “What about it?”
“It