Glitter Baby (21 page)

This had all the earmarks of an interesting conversation, and Fleur settled herself more comfortably against the side of the tub. “How little bitty?”

“Depends on your viewpoint.” Kissy tucked her feet beneath her and leaned against the door. “Do you like hunks?”

Fleur refilled her cup and thought about it. “I guess I’m sort of off men right now. Kind of neutral, you know what I mean?”

Kissy’s gumdrop eyes widened. “Gosh, no. I’m sorry.”

Fleur giggled. Whether it was from the champagne or Kissy or the lateness of the hour, she didn’t know, but she was fed up with self-hatred. It felt good to laugh again.

“Sometimes I think hunks have just about ruined my life,” Kissy said mournfully. “I tell myself I’m going to reform, but the next thing I know, I look up and there’s this piece of gorgeous male flesh standin’ right in my path with big, broad shoulders and those little bitty hips, and I can’t find it in my heart to pass him by.”

“Like Lufthansa?”

Kissy almost smacked her lips. “He had this dimple—right here.” She pointed to a spot on her chin. “That dimple, it did something to me, even though the rest of him wasn’t much. See, that’s my problem, Fleur—I can always find something. It’s cost me a lot.”

“What do you mean?”

“The pageant, for one thing.”

“Pageant?”

“Uhmm. Miss America. My mommy and daddy raised me from the cradle to go to Atlantic City.”

“And you didn’t make it?”

“Oh, I made it all right. I won Miss South Carolina without any trouble. But the night before the Miss America pageant, I committed an indiscretion.”

“Hunks?” Fleur suggested.

“Two of them. Both judges. Not at the same time, of course. Well, not exactly. One was a United States senator and the other was a tight end for the Dallas Cowboys.” Her eyelids drifted shut at the memory. “And oh my, Fleur, did he ever have one.”

“You were caught?”

“In the act. I tell you, to this very day it annoys me. I got kicked out, but they both stayed on. Now does that seem proper to you? Men like that being judges in the greatest beauty pageant in the world?”

It seemed grossly unfair to Fleur, and she said so.

“I suppose it all worked out, though. I was on my way back to Charleston when I met this truck driver who looked like John Travolta. He helped me get to New York and find a place to stay where I wouldn’t have to worry about being mutilated on my doorstep. I got a job working at an art gallery while I waited for my big break, but I have to tell you, it’s been slow in coming.”

“The competition’s tough.” Fleur refilled Kissy’s glass.

“It’s not the competition,” Kissy said indignantly. “I’m exceptionally talented. Among other things, I was born to do Tennessee Williams. Sometimes I think he wrote those crazy women just for me.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Trying to get the auditions in the first place. Directors take one look at me and won’t even let me try out. They say I’m not the right physical type, which is another way of saying that I’m too short and my boobies are too big and I look altogether frivolous. That’s the one that really annoys me. I’d have been Phi Beta Kappa if I’d stayed in college for my senior year. I’m tellin’ you, Fleur, beautiful women like you with legs and cheekbones and all the other blessings of God can’t imagine what it’s like.”

Fleur hadn’t been beautiful in a long time, and she nearly choked. “You’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen. All my life I’ve wanted to be little and pretty like you.”

This struck them both as being terrifically funny, and they dissolved in giggles. Fleur noticed their bottle was empty so she went on a scouting mission. When she returned with a fresh bottle, the bathroom was empty.

“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 over 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.

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.”

“I know you have, and I appreciate it, but I think it’s time I face the fact that it’s not going to happen.” Kissy wiped her fingers on her very short pink shorts. “Directors won’t let me read for anything other than comic sexpots, and I’m terrible in that kind of part. I’m a serious actress, Fleur.”

“I know you are, honey.” Fleur put all the conviction she could muster behind her words, but it wasn’t easy. Kissy—with her pouty mouth, pillowy breasts, and smudge of raspberry ripple on her chin—was a perfect comic sexpot.

“I got a raise at the gallery.” She made it sound as thought she’d gotten a terminal disease. “Maybe if I had a more disagreeable job, I’d push myself harder. I should never have gotten my minor in art history. It’s turned into my security blanket.” Her eyes automatically slid over a good-looking college student walking past, but her heart wasn’t in it. “I can only take so much rejection, and I’ve just about had my fill. I do a good job at the gallery, and I get recognized for it. Maybe that should be enough.”

Fleur squeezed her hand. “Hey, what happened to Miss Positive Thinking?”

“I think I’m thunked out.”

Fleur hated the idea of Kissy giving up, but with her own history, she wasn’t in a position to criticize. She rose from the bench. “Let’s go. If we play our cards right, we can catch the beginning of
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
on television before we have to get dressed for our dates.” She dropped the remainder of her cone and napkin in the trash.

“Good idea. How many times will this make?”

“Five or six. I lost count.”

“You haven’t told anybody about this, have you?”

“Are you nuts? Do you think I want the whole world to know we’re perverts?”

They left the park walking side by side, a dozen pairs of male eyes following them.

Fleur’s daily runs had firmed her muscles, and as the extra pounds melted away, her sexuality emerged from its long hibernation. The flow of water over her body in the shower, the slide of a soft sweater on her skin—everyday acts became sensual experiences. She wanted to be held by someone who shaved, someone with biceps and a hairy chest, someone who cussed and drank beer. Her body was starved for male contact, and as part of her self-improvement campaign, she began dating a personable young actor named Max Shaw, who was appearing off-off-Broadway in a Tom Stoppard play. He was Hollywood handsome, a rangy blond whose only drawback was a tendency to use phrases like “practicing my craft.” They had fun together, and she wanted him.

She donned jeans and the black tank top she’d bought on the clearance table at Ohrbach’s for their date the night of her twenty-fourth birthday. They’d planned to go to a party, but she said she’d had a tough week and suggested they skip it. Max wasn’t stupid, and half an hour later, they found themselves in his apartment.

He poured her a glass of wine and settled next to her on the foam slab that served as both couch and bed in his studio apartment. The smell of his cologne bothered her. Men should smell of soap and a clean shirt. Like Jake.

But her memories of her treacherous first lover were shackles made of dusty cobwebs, easy to break free of, and they drifted away as she kissed Max. Before long, they were naked.

He pushed all the right buttons, and she had the release she’d been craving, but she felt empty afterward. She told
him she had an early meeting and couldn’t stay. After she left his apartment, she began to tremble. Instead of feeling energized like Kissy after one of her casual encounters, Fleur felt as though she’d given up something important.

She saw Max a few more times, but each encounter left her more depressed, and she eventually ended it. Someday she’d meet a man she could give herself to with all her heart. Until then, she’d keep things casual and direct her energy into her job.

Christmas arrived, then New Year’s. The longer she worked for Parker, the more she disagreed with the way he ran his business. Olivia Creighton, for example, had spent most of the fifties as the queen of the B movies, specializing in torn dresses and being rescued by Rory Calhoun. With those days gone, Parker, along with Olivia’s personal manager, a man named Bud Sharpe, had decided to capitalize on what was left of her name with commercial endorsements. But Olivia still wanted to act.

“What do you have for me now?” The actress sighed into the telephone when she heard Fleur’s voice. “Laxative commercials?”

“Florida condominiums. The company wants a more glamorous image, and they know you’ll give it to them.” Fleur tried, but she couldn’t manufacture any more enthusiasm than Olivia.

“Did anything happen with that new Mike Nichols play?” Olivia asked after a moment’s silence.

Fleur toyed with a pencil on her desk. “It wasn’t a lead, and Bud wouldn’t consider it for you. Not enough money. I’m sorry.”

Fleur had argued with Bud and Parker over Olivia, but she couldn’t convince either of them to let Olivia have a shot at the Nichols play.

After she hung up, she slipped into the loafers she’d kicked off under her desk and went to see Parker. She’d worked for him for a year and had gradually assumed so much responsibility that he’d begun to rely on her for ev
erything, but he still didn’t like it when she questioned his judgment. The new Lynx album was bombing, Barry got lazier all the time, and Simon had started talking about setting up his own group, but Parker behaved as if Lynx would go on forever, and he used Fleur to pacify his other clients. Although she was gaining valuable experience because of his neglect, she didn’t believe this was the way to run an agency.