City of Mirrors Read online

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I said. “May I come in?”

  “Are you going to lecture me?” She dropped her phone into a very expensive leather purse that was slouched on the makeup counter.

  “I’m not your mother. I only play her.” I stepped up into the trailer and closed the door behind me.

  “If you can call that a mother.” She snorted, baring small sharp teeth. She was oddly beautiful, like a pretty animal. But nonetheless an animal.

  Sitting down on the built-in sofa, I glimpsed myself in the mirror. Out from under the set lights, my makeup looked harsh, exaggerating the lines on my face.

  I pulled off my wig. “God, this is giving me a headache.” My own hair was bound flat to my head with a gauzy net. Jenny eyed me warily as I took that off too and dumped it inside the wig. Then I shook my hair loose and asked casually, “Want to have dinner tonight?”

  “Can’t. Going clubbing.” She shot me a hard look. “And why would you want to suddenly have dinner with me?”

  “Is too much clubbing the reason you’re having trouble remembering your lines?” I rubbed my scalp and fluffed my hair.

  “The assistant director told me I won’t be needed tomorrow, and is it any of your business what I do?” Her chin jutted defiantly.

  I thought about telling her that making a movie was a group effort, each person dependent on the other for success. But I decided that concept wouldn’t have much meaning to her. She seemed to be a very insular young woman. She sat on the set observing, never entering the camaraderie that formed among the actors and the crew.

  “Yes, I do think it’s my business,” I said flatly. “I want this movie to work because I’m good in it and it will help my career so I can get another role and another, thereby earning money so I can eat and live. In other words, I’m a professional actress.”

  She laughed a surprisingly deep harsh laugh. “I heard you gave up your career to get married. Doesn’t sound too professional to me.”

  Trying to control my temper, I leaned back and stroked my wig as if it were an agitated pet dog I had to calm. “I made a choice knowing I couldn’t do both well.”

  But was that true? I remembered my mother, my husband, Colin, and I sitting on the beach one afternoon. We had watched a pelican high in the summer sky spot a fish, then tuck its long wings to its sides and drop like a guided missile into the ocean.

  “Only hunger can teach you to do that,” Mother had observed, squinting into the sun, her hair as determinedly blond as mine is now. “I had that kind of hunger. I would’ve done anything to be a star. And did.”

  “I never had that kind of hunger,” I said.

  “No, you didn’t.” Colin had hugged me.

  Now Jenny said, “So you chose the man over acting. And you come in here blaming me for potentially hurting your career? I don’t see it.”

  “You don’t have to. Zaitlin asked me to talk to you. Find out if you’re on drugs.”

  “Drugs? Is that what he thinks? Oh, God, something’s wrong with Jenny, it must be drugs,” she said, imitating a stupid worried parent.

  “He’s trying to figure out why you, who has a role other actresses your age would kill for, are such a fuck-up.” I flung the wig aside

  Offended, her lips pursed, and her checks flushed. “Is that what he called me?”

  “No. That’s what I’m calling you.” I held her gaze, glad that I didn’t have children of my own.

  “Why isn’t he here telling me all this? Is he afraid of me?” She seemed pleased that a big time moviemaker like Zaitlin couldn’t control her.

  “I think he’s at his wit’s end with you. So he asked me to help because he knows I need this movie to go well.”

  “He’s such a manipulator.”

  “That’s what producers do, Jenny. So why are you fucking up?”

  Thinking for a moment, she spoke with an unnerving honesty. “Because I don’t want to be an actress. I don’t get make-believe. I don’t get pretending. I don’t get any of it. I get reality. I get doing what you need to do to attain what you want. But why play dress-up and imagine you’re not who you really are? I mean, I never even did that when I was a child.”

  “Then why did you read for the part?”

  Her expression hardened and she fell silent, staring down at her hands.

  “Does your mother want you to be a movie star?” I edged forward, resting my elbows on my knees, trying to create some kind of intimacy between us.

  “My father.” She didn’t look up at me.

  I nodded. “Well, the problem is not your father at this point. The problem is, you are in a movie and you happen to be good.”

  “Really?” Surprised, she lifted her chin.

  “Really. You’d be fired by now if you weren’t.”

  “I doubt it.” She moved back in her chair, crossing her legs.

  I wondered why she doubted it, but I let it go. “Okay, here’s the deal. You go clubbing tonight. And I’ll see you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock to go over your lines with you.”

  “No way. I won’t be up.” She tossed her head, flipping her hair back from her shoulders.

  “Eleven o’clock then.”

  “Three. Sometimes I wish I did want to be an actress.” She looked away, momentarily letting her guard down. “It’d make my father happy. He’s such a dreamer, at least about me. But I know exactly who I am even if he doesn’t.” Her defenses were in place again.

  “Well, maybe you’ll want to act after you know your lines and start behaving like a professional.”

  She lifted her chin. “Maybe I’m more capable than you think I am.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you are. Where do you want to meet?”

  “My place.” She dug around in her bag and came out with a crumpled cocktail napkin and a pen that had specks of face powder and a stray strand of her auburn hair stuck to it. She blew at the pen until she was satisfied that it was clean, then wrote her address on the napkin. We both stood and she handed it to me. “It’s a condo on Beverly Drive near the Four Seasons Hotel.”

  I took the napkin. “Nice shoes.” She was wearing black peep-toe pumps with high, shiny, chrome-like heels. They were as pricey as her purse and her clothes. “They remind me of the god Mercury. Silver wings on your feet.” I winked at her. “See you tomorrow at three o’clock.”

  Grabbing my wig and stepping down out of the trailer, I turned back to close the door and glimpsed her standing stock-still, arms crossed against her chest, green eyes narrowed to slits, watching me with a cold calculating suspicion. I didn’t exactly feel a chill, but her expression brought me up short.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hollywood is like smog: it moves and settles wherever it wants to. Right now Malibu was the place to be. Once again.

  The houses that line Pacific Coast Highway are a buffet of styles: new Spanish, board-and-batten cottages, expensive stone chalets, and some that have all the warmth and style of a bank building. Shoulder to shoulder, like a phalanx of bunkers, they stand against the constant loud rumblings of the cars and trucks speeding along the highway. The back sides of the homes face the beach with only a strip of sand between them and the ocean. It is of course the interiors of the houses and their views that make them desirable and very expensive. My seventies-style, dark-brown wood-and-beige one-story was squeezed among them. In need of repair, it was in Celia’s vernacular a teardown.

  Unlocking my front door, I stepped into the small pavered foyer. The house smelled damp, and the air hung heavy and undisturbed. From the kitchen a twenty-four hour news cable station blahed, blahed, blahed, filling the stillness that permeated my life. Even after a year, I couldn’t make myself come home to deathly quiet. I needed the sound of a human voice even if it came from a TV.

  In the living room, I threw my purse on the sofa and opened the slid
ing glass doors to let in the salty air and the sound of the crashing ocean. Colin’s two Oscars on the mantel stared at me blindly, proud in their art deco nudity. I took my iPhone from my bag and checked for messages. I had a text from Celia telling me she couldn’t make dinner. Something had come up. Robert Zaitlin, I thought. And then I wondered what I always wondered: Why wasn’t I seeing someone? Hell, why wasn’t I having sex with someone? Anyone. Pathetic.

  Exhausted, I took a shower. Pondering why Jenny didn’t fear being fired by Zaitlin, I watched as my heavy makeup mixed with the water at my feet, turned it beige, and swirled down the drain. I was shedding my actor’s skin.

  Wrapped in Colin’s silk paisley robe, I scrounged in the refrigerator for food and wine. I collected some low-fat cheese that tasted like cardboard and some low-fat crackers that tasted like the low-fat cheese and put them on the kitchen table. Then I opened a can of low-fat minestrone soup and heated it in a bowl in the microwave. While it was being nuked, I opened the door to Colin’s office, which was just off the kitchen. The air was undisturbed and cold. His computer sat on his desk. Shelves of books that lined the walls waited to be thumbed through by him. The old twin bed he used for naps, which he called “thinking time,” was wedged next to a back door. It looked as if nobody had ever laid down on it, or punched the pillow into submission. His chair was swiveled toward me as if he’d just heard me come in. As if he were just looking up from his work to see me.

  “My mother died last week.” I paused, then I quietly closed the door.

  Filled with too much wine and uneatable food, I stood on my rotting redwood deck breathing in the cold night air and feeling the sea wind tugging at my hair. The moon, as big as an actor’s ego, draped the sand and water in a silvery glow. A groaning noise coming from the pathway I shared with the house next door startled me. Owned by Ryan Johns, the screenwriter, the massive white cement structure rose high above me like a giant marshmallow with windows: a model to self-aggrandizement and no taste.

  I moved closer to the sound. In the moonlight I could make out the form of a man lying half under a giant hibiscus bush. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and Ugg boots. Moving quickly to the corner of my deck, I grabbed the hose, turned it on full force, and aimed it at him.

  “Tsh unami, Fuckn’ Tsunami,” a drunken Ryan bellowed as he struggled to sit up against the blast.

  As I turned off the water, he thrashed around, clutched the hibiscus bush, which was dangerously close to snapping from his weight, and clawed his way up to his feet. He was a big burly Irishman who looked as if he was born in a pub, except he came from a wealthy family in Connecticut that didn’t understand their son’s creativity. Or so he’d told me drunkenly over and over the one night I mistakenly went out to dinner with him. His thick reddish-orange hair formed lovely ringlets when it was wet.

  In spite of myself, I smiled. He shook himself like a St. Bernard and almost fell over. Staggering, he grabbed hold of his ornate banister with both hands.

  “You’re a mean woman, Diana.” His drenched Hawaiian shirt sagged on him.

  “And you’re a drunk.”

  “You need a man. Then you wouldn’t be so bitter.”

  “And one night I’ll just leave you out here and see how you like it.”

  “I was cel … ler … brating. Sold another idea for a screenplay.”

  We lived in a world where ideas were sold as if they were diamonds and then promptly turned into what they really were: rhinestones.

  “I wonder what Colin would think of that.” He reeled up the stairs to his veranda. “He never sold jush an idea.”

  “He’s dead. Why do you keep competing with him?”

  “Nobody’s dead to an Irishman.”

  Wondering if he had even been to Ireland, I left him slumped on one of the many lounges that lined his long veranda.

  In bed I clicked on the TV and took a sleeping pill. I watched W. C. Fields stumble down the stairs and announce “I’ve arrived.” David Copperfield directed by David Lean, I thought. The only thing my mother and I enjoyed doing together was watching old movies.

  The pill wasn’t working. I took another and then let my hand wander over to the cold side of the bed. I was afraid to sleep, and I was afraid to stay awake.

  The loud ringing of the phone jerked me out of my pharmaceutical slumber.

  “Hello?” I mumbled into the receiver.

  There was no reply.

  “Hello?”

  I could hear rustling sounds, and then a woman’s terrified scream.

  “Hello!” I sat up, groggy as hell. My tongue felt thick. “Who’s calling?” I peered at the display for the caller ID number. It took me a few seconds to focus. God, it was Celia.

  “Celia!” I yelled frantically into the receiver. “Celia!”

  The phone disconnected.

  I called her back and got her voicemail. Could she have turned her cell off that quickly if she were … what? I thought of calling the police. But what would I say? I threw off the duvet. Pills scattered. Had I spilled them when I fell asleep? Shit. How many did I take?

  Unsteady, I forced myself up and into my robe. The room tilted as I took Celia’s house key from a china bowl on my dresser. Celia lived about ten houses down from mine. We had exchanged keys so that when we were traveling we could look after one another’s place.

  Lurching down the hall and into the living room, I opened the door to the deck. The cold wind jarred me. I gulped in air and shook my head, trying to clear my brain. I stumbled down the stairs, out onto the sand, and fell to my knees. I managed to get back up on my feet. Christ, I didn’t have shoes on. Staggering along the water’s edge, feeling lightheaded and queasy, I somehow made it onto Celia’s terrace.

  I pounded on the French doors. I pounded again. No response. I let myself in.

  “Celia?” I called into the dark, too dazed and confused to think I might be in danger.

  Stumbling into the sofa, I made my way around it, into her bedroom, and found the light switch. Her bed was made. Everything was where it should be. Breaking out into a damp sweat, I checked the rest of the house. She wasn’t there. In the kitchen I opened the door that led to the garage. Her car was gone. I stared a moment, then closed the door, locked up the house, and left.

  My teeth chattered. I wrapped my arms around me against the wet piercing wind. The ice-cold water bit at my bare feet as I trudged home. I noticed Ryan Johns was still sprawled on his lounge.

  In my bedroom, I stared at the phone and the pills on my bed. The room began to swirl. I had to lie down. I had to get warm. Just for a minute, I promised myself, until the dizziness and nausea passed. Then I’d think about what I should do. Collapsing onto the duvet, I closed my eyes. The awful sound of Celia’s scream echoed in my head as my world spun around.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I slowly opened my eyes, then quickly closed them against the morning light seeping in around the edges of the shaded bedroom window. Turning on my side to snuggle in, I felt the grit of sand between my toes and on my calves. The nightmarish sound of Celia’s scream came back to me.

  Sitting up, I grabbed the phone and called her. Again I got her voicemail. Shit. With my head pounding, I threw on a pair of jeans, a sweater, and tennis shoes. I finally found her house key on the floor where I must’ve dropped it last night.

  I ran along the hard wet sand. Celia’s house was a sprawling cottage with bougainvillea and roses clambering along her terrace. I knocked on the French door. No answer. Peering in, I saw her lying on the sofa. She was turned on her side, her back to me, wearing the clothes she’d had on yesterday. She was still.

  I banged louder. “Celia, it’s Diana. Let me in!”

  Without moving, she yelled “Go away! I’ll phone you later.”

  No woman screams the way Celia had last night without something being very wrong. Taking her key from my
pocket, I opened the door.

  “Oh hell, Diana, somebody tells you to do something, and you always do the opposite.” With a groan, Celia sat up, keeping her head lowered. Her long raven hair screened her face. Her orange skirt was rumpled, and her black chiffon blouse was ripped at the right shoulder seam. She was holding a bag of frozen organic peas.

  Moving closer, I gently pushed her hair back from her face.

  “Don’t, Diana. Please,” she mumbled.

  A large bruise spread purple and yellow-green over her right eye and cheek bone. “What happened to you?” I asked.

  Sighing, she lifted her head. Her lower lip was cut, the blood dried and brown.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” She pressed the bag of peas to the discolored area.

  “I’m taking you to the emergency room.”

  “No!”

  I sat down next to her. “Who did this to you?”

  “Nobody. It was a stupid accident. I …”

  “Before you go on you should know that your cell phone rang mine last night and I heard you scream. If you don’t tell me who did this, I’m calling the police.”

  “You heard me?”

  “Yes. Screaming.”

  “Oh, God, no.”

  “Tell me what happened, Celia.”

  “I can’t.” Her face was strained, terrified. “It could ruin me and my real estate business.”

  “Did Zaitlin do this?”

  “He would never do such a thing. And you mustn’t tell him.”

  “Then who?”

  Her violet-colored eyes darted around the room as if someone dangerous was hiding among the pale blue linen-covered chairs, warmly polished chests, and striped silk drapes. The frozen bag of peas dropped from her hand to the floor and she began to cry. I put my arms around her. She leaned her head on my shoulder and sobbed. Calming, she pulled away, and I dug for Kleenex in my pocket and handed it to her.

  “Do you remember how you and I met?” Sniffling, she dabbed at her face.