Beneath a Starlet Sky Read online

“Hey Lev,” she says holding out her arms to him. “Christopher.”

  “Kate,” Christopher says. “You’re looking … good.” The air seems to hang tensely between the two former lovers.

  “Come on.” I grab Lev’s hand. “I think I spotted someone giving out Swarovski crystal Kleenex cases and I’m having a major mascara malfunction.” I lead Lev out of the room to give Kate and Chris some space.

  “Excuse me, can I have everyone’s attention,” my mother says, tapping her champagne glass. “I hope you enjoyed our little video tribute. And now I’d like everyone to come outside for a special performance. It’s Sid, the winner of American Idol! Who, I’m pleased to say, will be appearing next month on Wristwatch Wives!”

  Oh god. Only my mother would have done this. The claim to fame of this year’s Idol winner is that he or she won’t confirm whether he or she is a he or she. There’s no way I’m staying for this freak show.

  “I think I just heard your beeper go off,” I say, linking my arm through Lev’s and pleading with him with my eyes to get us out of here.

  “Yes, it seems I’m wanted back at the hospital immediately,” he says, following my lead.

  “Come on, you two. I want you front and center outside for the performance,” my mother says, coming up beside us.

  “Um, actually, Mom, we have to go. I’m sorry, but Lev has to get back to the hospital,” I say.

  “What? Right now? Darling, it’s your engagement party!” Mom says, eyes darting toward where Alex and the rest of the crew are training their cameras on Sid as he or she steps up on the makeshift stage. “You can’t leave your own engagement party. You have to stay.” Mom’s tone has gone from commanding to practically pleading. “I’ve gone to so much trouble. I don’t care if I have to call the head of Cedars right now,” she says. Lev looks at me and then over to my mother, just as my father approaches. “Paulie, they want to leave their own engagement party already,” my mother says beseechingly.

  “You know, Blanca, Paulie,” Lev says, shaking his head in a signal of having lost his battle with his patience, “I have to be honest because this is killing me on Lola’s behalf.” His voice is steady, but it’s clear that he’s quite upset. “This doesn’t seem to be an engagement party for your daughter. I don’t know much about Hollywood, but I do know something about self-promotion and I must say that this whole thing reeks of it,” he says coolly, looking first to my mother square in the eyes and then to my father, all the while with his hand placed protectively at the small of my back. As he stands there waiting for them to respond, I realize that I’ve never been in this position before. I’ve never had anyone stand up for me to my parents. And I like the view from here.

  My parents seem to be speechless, briefly. Uncomfortable, which is something they rarely are, by being told the truth, which is something they are rarely told. Then my mother wills herself to break the spell. “There’s no time for this. We have a performance that needs to go on,” she says, sashaying away and toward the stage. Which seems like a fitting place for her to be heading.

  “You ready to go, Lo?” Lev asks turning toward me.

  “Yeah, one song—for Mom—and then let’s go,” I whisper and for the first time in my life I’ve completely forgotten my father’s presence there until he abruptly wraps me in a hug.

  “I’m happy for you, sweetheart. He’s a good man,” he says into my ear and then just as quickly lets me go. When Lev reaches out to shake his hand, my father dismisses it. Instead, he gives Lev a hug for the first time, patting him on the back several times as he does. Then just as quickly he bolts through the living room and disappears.

  “It’s such an honor to be here tonight,” Sid says, running black lacquered fingernails through his or her asymmetrical haircut. “Paulie,” he or she calls out to the crowd, “I’m a huge fan, though I have to admit, I’m more scared to perform in front of you than Simon Cowell. Thank you for having me here tonight. My album drops next week. I hope you’ll all buy it!” He or she scans the audience. “Holy shit. Is that Nic Knight? Wow, man, I love you,” he or she says.

  “I love you too,” Nic yells back.

  “Wow, this is so surreal. Okay, this one’s for you, Layla. Congratulations on your engagement.” Layla? Did he or she just call me Layla? As Sid starts in on the Derek & the Dominos classic, Nic Knight suddenly storms the stage, grabbing a guitar from a stand. As Nic’s guitar lets out deafening feedback, Mr. or Ms. Idol awkwardly tries to incorporate this unexpected guest into the performance, becoming more and more stilted as Nic starts provocatively dancing with him or her, playfully flashing his sarong. Mom stands off to the side, grinning contentedly as Alex captures the footage.

  As the crowd starts cheering, I run inside to grab my purse and am stopped in my tracks by the sight of Kate and Christopher slipping into the downstairs bathroom.

  “This is a bad idea,” I hear Kate whisper as Chris pulls her in by the wrist. “Ssh … just stop … talking for once,” he replies. I duck out of the hallway before they can spot me, grab a swag bag and Lev, and lead him out of Crazy Town.

  Inside the car, I reach into the swag bag and pull out Season One of Coz’s Cut-Throat Couture. Next is a T-shirt bedazzled with glittery button batteries that spell out “Chili Lu Loves Lola and Lev.” Give me a fucking break. As we pull our car past the spinning Chevy in the driveway I toss the swag bag onto the driver’s seat, where it rotates crazily as the strains of “Layla” fade into the distance.

  * * *

  My body isn’t even sure what time zone I’m in when I rush inside Bar Pitti on 6th Ave and Bleecker with sweaty palms. With the economy in such dire straits, I’m certain I’m not the only one with sweaty palms in lower Manhattan at the moment. When I find Stefano Rabinski from LVMH sitting at a corner table, he’s already tearing into his wild boar ragu. He waves me over.

  “I ordered you the meatballs.” The famous veal ones that launched a hundred lawsuits. “Lola, I’m going to cut to the chase: With the recession as it is, no one’s buying high-end retail. And if you can’t get sales up, it doesn’t make sense for us to continue to invest. It’s not personal. I actually like you and Julian. It’s a numbers game.” His silky smooth Italian accent does nothing to soften the devastating blow.

  I think it’s safe to say that my insides are shaking to the point of internal seizure. It seems my outsides are as well as I reach for a glass of water with a quivering hand.

  “The release of Four Weddings is right around the corner, and it’s going to be really great exposure for Julian,” I insist.

  “Maybe,” Stefano says, biting into a piece of bread. “But we’ve actually lost money on the movie so far. Between having to pay for your gown samples and the actual production of the gown for the movie and flying you both to Australia. The company is spending and not earning, Lola. It’s really that simple.”

  “We’re doing everything we can, Stefano, but please, just hang in there. We’ll make it happen,” I say, but can’t stop wondering how. How are we going to make it happen?

  I’m not even sure if I’ve eaten at all, or what else Stefano and I talked about by the time we say good-bye. All I feel is the buzz of panic in my ears. As I step out of Bar Pitti into a torrential downpour I barely notice that I’m instantly drenched. I speed-dial Kate.

  “Kate, what’s happening with Four Weddings?” I ask the second she picks up.

  “No hello? Geezus, now I know what I sound like,” Kate says. “Great news, I was going to call you, we just found out that it’s premiering at Cannes in May.” Yes! Okay, think, Lola, think. There has to be a way to use the mega press coverage from Cannes to save JT Inc. I just don’t know what it is yet. “Hang on,” I say to her, as I’m pelted in the face by lethal raindrops, trying to open my umbrella while negotiating the angle of my cell phone on my shoulder at the same time that I’m raising my arm up in the air to hail a cab, which seems at the moment to be as likely as Kanye West and Susan Boyle doing a duet.

&n
bsp; “Oh shit,” Kate says with emphasis, and I hear something crashing as though it’s landed on her midcentury Lawson Fenning coffee table.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, finally getting my umbrella open, though I’m not sure it even matters since I’m already drenched from head to my open-toe black leather booties.

  “Christopher’s fucking drum, that’s what’s wrong,” she says. “I told him to come get it, but he keeps spacing it out.”

  “Maybe it’s because he doesn’t really want to and is hoping you’ll get back together,” I offer.

  “That’s not happening,” Kate says flatly. “But Cannes is. You and Julian should come.”

  “You know, I think you’re right. I think we should, too,” I say, though I have no idea how we’re going to pay our way there. Waiting to cross Houston, I get splashed in the face with dirty rainwater from a taxi rounding a corner. That’s just freaking great. Could this day get worse? “I gotta go, I’ll call you later.”

  Click.

  And then, ten soggy blocks later, it hits me. I feel like how I imagine Henri Poincare did when he first discovered chaos theory. Or those guys when they invented Google. Or Gaga when she discovered the flank steak.

  I squish into Julian’s loft and immediately strip off my soaked khaki trench, shrunken white button-down, cropped navy trousers, and black booties.

  “Are you trying to seduce me, Miss Santisi?” Julian says, eyeballing my mismatched lace bra and cotton panties.

  “I just had to walk all the way home from a completely disastrous lunch with Stefano,” I say, heading into the bathroom for a robe.

  “How bad was it?” Julian asks timidly, grabbing a slumbering Tom Ford off his spot on the sofa as I curl into the plush terry. “Are we talking one Xanax or two?”

  “We’re talking I should hide the whole bottle because you might be tempted to take them all.”

  “Oh god. Don’t tell me yet. I’m not ready. I don’t think I can handle it,” Julian says, petting Tom Ford a little too aggressively. The dog issues a low whimper.

  “Julian, Stefano is threatening to pull their financing. This is serious.”

  “I told you not to tell me yet. Why did you just tell me?” Julian says starting to pace in circles, clutching Tom Ford to his chest. “What are we going to do, Lo?”

  “First of all, you need to stop pacing. You’re making me dizzy, not to mention poor Tom Ford,” I say. “But I think I have our answer. I just found out that Four Weddings and a Bris is premiering at Cannes. Saffron’s wearing your gown in the movie. And that’s where we begin. We maximize that opportunity and turn it into sales.” I pick up Julian’s sketchbook and quickly flip through the stack of gorgeous wedding dress drawings. “Between all the gowns you designed for the film and what you’ve been working on for me, you already have an entire line of wedding gowns here. Forget the spring collection you’ve been working on. We’re going to turn your amazing bridal gowns into a new collection and premiere it at the Cannes Film Festival to tie in with the premiere of the movie. Move over, Vera Wang! Maybe we could even get Saffron and Cricket to walk in the runway show!” I say excitedly. “Sure, the economy’s in the toilet, but people aren’t going to stop falling in love and getting married and they will always splurge on their dream dress.”

  “That’s why you’re my CEO,” Julian says, with a newfound glimmer in his eye. “Because you’re freaking brilliant.”

  “We don’t have that much time before Cannes,” I say, suddenly struck by just how much work—not to mention money that we don’t have—it’s actually going to take to launch a brand-new bridal collection.

  “After what we pulled off at the Oscars last year, we can do anything,” Julian says. “Yes we Cannes!”

  I let that one go. “I’m going to call Stefano now. Keep sketching!”

  * * *

  I feel like I’ve been on Survivor: Fashion Island these past few weeks. I’ve barely slept, eaten, or showered. I’ve had to cancel all flights to Levinland indefinitely. I’ve been working my ass off to make sure this Cannes opportunity comes to fruition and—fingers and toes crossed—gets sales up for Julian Tennant Inc. and saves my ass. That is, saves our company from going under. Stefano has made it crystal clear that this is our final immunity idol.

  I’ve had to max out yet another credit card to pull together the scratch we’ll need to complete the collection and seal the deal with Nadia, the biggest supermodel of the moment. I’ve been begging and pleading with her agent to make her the lead model in Julian’s show, which would not only add great cachet, but garner a ton of media attention. I’m close, but I’m not there yet.

  But the big clincher is, I’ve finally set up a meeting with Om and Nano—a.k.a. Namo—music’s hottest, greenest, and most ardently vegan couple. With their ubiquitous fund-raising concerts, they’re even bigger than Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Julian had a dream in which Om and Nano did a cover of “Like a Virgin” at Cannes, with Om in a JT wedding dress. He’d been using The Secret to attract them to the idea. I went the more practical route. I’d been to kindergarten with Om’s stylist, who I tracked down on Facebook, who put me in touch with her record label, who put me in touch with her manager, who put me in touch with her agent, who put me in touch with her lawyer, who finally put me in touch with her publicist, who told me that Om, a die-hard fellow PETA-ite, was, in fact, already a fan of Julian. They’ve agreed to perform for a wildly reduced fee, so long as JT Inc. covers the carbon offsets for the plane ride and we print our programs on recycled hemp.

  Which brings me to where I am right at this minute: in the office of chief Bitchitor Coz herself, choking on my last shreds of dignity and pride to try and save JT Inc. Because the last piece in the puzzle is Vain, the coverage we truly need more than anything to make it all come together for Julian. I’ve practically had to prostrate myself before Ash, who was still feeling guilty about messing up the time for Coz’s visit to see Julian’s collection, to get this sliver of a five-minute appointment.

  As I sit across from Coz, back resolutely turned away from the spectacular view down Broadway in her prime office in the Condé Nast building, I’m realizing this challenge is far more gruesome than any on the real Survivor. She’s tougher than any tribal council, and trying to convince her to do a piece on the debut in Vain exceeds any challenge I’ve been dealt.

  Did I just imagine that, or did Coz just guffaw in my face? No, that was an actual guffaw. I imagine her eyes rolling back in her head beneath those sunglasses that are practically covering her entire face. Does she ever not wear sunglasses?

  “Do you know how valuable exposure in our magazine is? Come up with a reason why Vain would want to do this and get back to me,” she says, sauntering by the rack of sublime bridal gowns Julian practically killed himself finishing for this meeting. “I have another meeting. I’m sure you can find your way out,” she says, pushing back from her desk, a minimalist disk of highly polished ebony. As she marches to the door, the metallic silver-and-black stripes of her tank dress accentuates her Amazonian stature. Looking at the tear sheets spread on the desk, the framed Vain covers gracing the walls, the racks upon racks of couture, it comes to me. I will not let Coz desert me in this office and blow us off yet again. Julian’s too talented for this. I’m too good for this.

  “Wait,” I yell after her. “I’ll get you a cover with Om. Nano and Om together, if you want them.”

  Coz freezes midstride. With her toothpick-thin back staring at me, I swear I see the outline of her ribs shudder at the thought that she’d get Namo on a Vain cover. She’d be the first, as Nano and Om have refused everyone from Vogue to Vanity Fair since they don’t approve of the carbon footprint magazines leave. I don’t know what makes me think they won’t refuse me, but at the moment it seems like my only lifeline. We seemed to have switched game shows and I’m now a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. When Coz turns back around, she has a sly smile on her lips.

  “Lola, if you could make that ha
ppen, I would be forever indebted to you,” she says with a syrupy sweetness. “You would have the Julian Tennant spread. Now I really must run to this meeting.”

  Once she’s gone, I carefully unhook Julian’s gowns from the rack and head out, wondering how the heck I’m going to get Nano and Om to do the cover. And what I was thinking, even suggesting that I could?

  * * *

  “Hey hon,” Lev’s face fills my MacBook screen. These video chats are the only dose of Lev I’ve gotten in the last month. “You’re not going to believe this. They gave me a scene on Para-Medic!”

  “What?! They gave you a scene?” I attempt to laugh it off as a fluke, though the hairs on my arms stand up on end.

  “It’s just one scene,” Lev says. “It was really fun, but actually, I’m pretty bad. They already sent me the clip by e-mail. I’ll forward it to you now so you can have a good laugh.”

  “Oh yeah, sure, I’d love to see it,” I say, not really meaning it at all. “How’s Chris?” I ask.

  “Well, I actually think he may be turning a corner. He’s been spending a lot of time with this girl, Gigi. The one who starred in his movie. She seems really sweet and he actually seems kinda sorta happy.”

  “Gigi? Oh, well, good,” I say, feeling a ping of loyalty toward Kate and then remembering that she’s the one who dumped my brother.

  “Sweetheart,” Lev says as I hear his beeper going off. “I’m being paged.”

  “You go, honey,” I say.

  “To be continued later?” he asks.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I love you,” he says.

  “Love you too.”

  I quit iChat and check my inbox for Lev’s e-mail. There it is. It’s just one scene. I force myself to press PLAY.

  The camera shows a close-up of an OR nurse patting away the sweat from the forehead of a surgeon bent over a surgical field. “Thanks, Carol,” he says absent-mindedly. “Okay … almost got it … and … we’re out.” He flips something into a kidney-shaped plastic tub with a ping, steps back from the prone patient, and nods to an associate. “Doctor Sotomayor, will you close, please? I’m outta here.” The surgeon strips off his surgical gloves and flings them into the trash, pulling off his sterile mask as he strides toward the exit doors to reveal … my own Lev.