Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood (8 page)

“I, umm, should . . .” Grace blinked, but she didn’t leave.

“Right,” Theo agreed. But he didn’t step away either.

The city hummed below them. Somewhere in the distance, Grace could hear the grind of a garbage truck — brakes squealing — but to her, it seemed like she and Theo were the only people in the world.

She could kiss him.

The thought bubbled into Grace’s mind, and in a split second, she could see it. The possibility. She could kiss him: just move in those last few inches between them, press her lips to his, reach out to touch his face . . .

She reeled back. “I should go!” she exclaimed, face burning. What if he could tell what she’d been thinking? What if he
knew
? “But, thanks. For tonight. It was fun!”

“Sure.” Theo seemed thrown. “I . . . Will I see you again, before you leave?”

“Maybe?” Grace gulped. “I don’t know. I mean, we’ll be busy. But . . . take care!”

Theo blinked. “Uh, you too.”

There was another pause.

“OK, then!” Grace backed away. “Bye!”

She turned and fled up the front path. What was she doing? Why did she have to go and ruin everything? This was good-bye; it was supposed to matter.

“Theo?” Grace turned, but he was already walking away, a silhouette against the city lights.

Her heart fell. It was over.

She let herself into the house.

Hallie didn’t understand her sister. There they were: delivered from poverty to the land of fame, fortune, and twenty-four seven valet service, and Grace was moping around like someone had just died.

Which, OK, someone had, but as far as Hallie was now concerned, dropping dead of a heart attack was the best thing their lying, cheating disgrace of a father had done in a long while.

“Will you just relax?” Hallie emerged from her new bedroom to find Grace heaving boxes up the guesthouse stairs; her face set in that mousy little frown she’d been wearing ever since their U-Haul had left San Francisco city limits. Hallie had been tired enough of it after the first hour, but now, three weeks into summer, it was seriously threatening her good mood. “We’re not in a prison camp somewhere,” she reminded Grace. “Let someone else do the heavy lifting.”

“Like who?” Grace stubbornly shoved the box down the hall.

“I don’t know.” Hallie shrugged. “The housekeeper, maybe, or the gardener. . . .”

“They’re Uncle Auggie’s staff, not ours,” Grace reminded her. Hallie just rolled her eyes. Details!

“Hasn’t he told us, like, a hundred times? What’s his is ours — and that includes Julio. You’re looking at this all wrong.” She grabbed Grace’s arm and steered her to the window. “See?”

Grace tried to tug away. “Hallie . . .”

“No, look!” Hallie insisted, opening the window out onto the courtyard below. “How can you not be happy right now? This is heaven!”

It was. Pure paradise. Uncle Auggie’s mansion was in the style of an English country estate, all crumbling red bricks and billowing clouds of white roses. It struck Hallie as kind of ridiculous — given that they were five thousand miles and at least a hundred years away from Victorian England — but she guessed that when you were that rich, the usual rules of taste and decency didn’t apply. And what her newly beloved uncle lacked in substance, he certainly made up for in style. The back of the house was all folding glass partition: opening out onto a patio area large enough to entertain two dozen of his closest friends on the white calico-covered couches. Beyond that, immaculate green lawn stretched down to the pool area, a perfect rectangle of gleaming tile and sandstone, with canopied sun loungers and a dining area.

Their guesthouse was at the back of the property: a sweet cottage adorned with a thatched roof and white shutters, overlooking a tiny paved courtyard filled with ceramic cherub statues. Hallie breathed in the faint scent of roses and felt utterly content. “Everything’s going to be OK now.” She beamed at Grace. “I told you everything would work out, and it has!”

“Sure, except for how we’re going to support ourselves,” Grace replied, in her familiar depressing refrain. “And if Mom’s going to be able to get a job, or if we can —”

“La, la, la!” Hallie covered her ears. “I’m not listening!”

She went back into her room to collect her sunglasses and her well-worn copy of Sarah Bernhardt’s memoirs. Leaving San Francisco had been heart wrenching, but it had taken only a few days of poolside reflection for Hallie to realize that L.A. was her destiny. There had to be a reason for all the misery she’d been through this last year. Her father, Portia, Juilliard . . . Hallie sometimes felt like she was the princess in a cruel fairy tale — suffering one needless punishment after another, as if the universe had conspired against her and the Fates were laughing at her pain.

But no more. The heartache was over; her evil stepmother was far away, and Hallie was finally right where she was supposed to be.

Hollywood.

Sure, it had taken her a while to come around. Los Angeles was, as all her friends agreed, a cultural wasteland: the domain of fake boobs and even faker smiles. Everybody knew that to become a real actress, you had to go to New York. Chicago, maybe, in a pinch. But L.A?

Never!

Hallie had despaired. How was she supposed to embrace her destiny as a true
artiste
in such a shallow, superficial place? This was where people came to become (and she shuddered at the word)
famous
— not serious actors, dedicated to their craft. Here, people read tabloid magazines, and thinly veiled celebrity “novels,” if they read at all! Here, women starved themselves half to death and injected bacteria into their faces, as if their wrinkles were something to be ashamed of, and not the canvas upon which great works of theater could be painted! Here —

“Girls!” A voice echoed up from the backyard, all honeyed tones. “Come join us for breakfast!”

Hallie sighed, and started down the stairs. “ ‘Girls,’ ” she mimicked as Grace followed behind. “She’s only three years older than me!”

“Don’t be like that,” Grace scolded. “You should give her a chance. She’s nice, really.”

“Sure she is.”

Hallie wasn’t convinced. The one downside of Uncle Auggie’s generosity was that it came complete with his new bride, Amber — a former soap actress turned trophy wife who was a walking, talking, bleached, manicured testament to Los Angeles’s inferior cultural legacy. As they emerged from the guesthouse, the child bride was sauntering across the lawn in a gauzy white wrap — hair in a perky ponytail, lips glossed bright pink. The sturdy Mexican housekeeper followed behind with a tray of food.

Amber waved them over to the dining area. “You’ve got to try some juice — fresh squeezed! It does wonders for your digestion!”

Hallie forced a smile. Amber had been overflowing with advice and “helpful” tips since the moment they’d walked through the door. So far, she’d offered to “hook Hallie up” with her dermatologist, cosmetologist, and dietician. Hallie had asked where the nearest bookstore was, but Amber had just blinked at her in confusion, and then recommended a salon that she swore gave the best bikini waxes on the West Coast — complete with Swarovski crystal bejazzling.

Hallie couldn’t even.

“How are you girls settling in?” Amber asked as they joined her at the table.

“Great, thanks,” Grace answered. Hallie gave a vague smile and tried to shoo away the matching shih tzus yapping at her ankles.

“Marilyn! Monroe! Come to Mama!” Amber called them over and scooped one onto her lap. Whether it was Marilyn or Monroe, Hallie couldn’t say. “You know, I’m from out of town too,” she told them, nuzzling the dog’s nose. “Mayfield, Wisconsin. Middle of nowhere. Nothing but hogs and hay bales for miles, we used to say!” She giggled. “There was no way I was sticking around waiting tables the rest of my life, so the day I turned eighteen, I was out of there. Hello, Hollywood!”

Hallie didn’t want to encourage her, but part of her was burning with fascination. “How did you meet Uncle Auggie?”

“On set,” she declared, a note of pride in her voice. “You know the Lifetime movie
A Small, Distant Scream: The Kayla Bates Story
?”

“About the girl who got kidnapped and sold into white slavery?” Hallie perked up. Trashy movies of the week were her secret guilty pleasure; she’d seen more of the posters framed in Uncle Auggie’s study than she’d ever care to admit to her thespian friends.

“Yes!” Amber beamed.

“You were in that?” Hallie frowned, trying to place her.

“I played Social Worker Number Two,” Amber said proudly. “Anyway, Auggie dropped by to oversee production, our eyes met across the soundstage . . . and that was it. Love!”

Grace smiled at her. “That’s so sweet.”

“Uh-huh,” Hallie murmured politely. Love, and the chance to escape from nonspeaking, background roles. “Do you still act?”

“Oh, no.” Amber shook her head. “I don’t have the time now. Life is so crazy!” She popped a fresh strawberry between glossed lips and put on a pair of huge designer sunglasses. Crazy indeed.

“How are my favorite girls today?” Uncle Auggie’s voice boomed, startling Hallie. He crossed the lawn toward them, resplendent in white pants and a bright-orange polo shirt — unbuttoned down his neck to reveal a swath of wiry chest hair peeping through. His dark skin was weathered, hair balding on top, but from the way Amber leaped up and cooingly kissed his cheek, Hallie would have guessed it was Adonis himself come to eat with them. “Remember,
mi casa
is
su casa,
” he said, taking a cup of coffee from Rosa’s waiting hands. “You need anything, you just let me know!”

“And be sure to put lotion on, both of you,” Amber added. “You’re not used to the sun down here, you don’t want to burn!” She thrust a tiny tube at Hallie. “It’s like my mama always said, ‘Lotion, lotion, lotion!’ And that goes for moisturizer too.”

“Listen to the woman,” Auggie chortled. “I swear her mama doesn’t look a day over thirty-five!” The couple laughed together, then Uncle Auggie noticed his plate: half a grapefruit and a dry slice of toast. “Sweetie, what is this? Where’s my omelet?”

“Baby, you know you’re supposed to watch your cholesterol,” Amber cooed, squeezing his arm.

Auggie turned to Grace and Hallie. “Isn’t she a princess? Always looking out for me.”

“That’s because I love you, honey.” They snuggled together, cooing. Auggie tickled her under the chin, Amber fed him a grape, and Hallie finally broke.

“You know, I better get going,” she told them, standing.

“Awww!” Amber cried. “Stay, eat.”

“I can’t,” Hallie insisted, already edging away. Another ten minutes of
Inappropriate Age Gaps: The Live Show
and her breakfast could well make a reappearance. “I’ve got a ton of stuff to do.”

Grace raised an eyebrow. “More tanning and pool time?”

“No,” Hallie told her with an icy glare. So, maybe she had spent the last weeks in a lazy rotation between sun lounger, pool mattress, and couch, but it wasn’t like Grace had been off curing cancer or anything. “I have plans,” she informed them dramatically. “Important plans!”

Hallie changed into a vintage nineties print dress and her favorite Victorian boots, and struck out from the shaded confines of the compound. People who said you can’t get around L.A. without a car clearly didn’t live in Beverly Hills, she decided. Uncle Auggie lived just north of Rodeo Drive, in a leafy, quiet area that could almost be called suburban, if the suburbs were made up of a parade of huge mansions on every block. Their English country manor turned out to be almost dignified compared to the neighbors’: as Hallie strolled, she counted two Tuscan villas, three stucco mansions adorned with Greek columns, and one modern monstrosity — looking like someone had tossed huge cubes in a random heap.