Beneath a Starlet Sky Read online

  “In a minute,” he says. He reaches out and gives Gigi’s hand a lingering squeeze as she melts into the crowd.

  “Kate, I really hope we can talk at some point, I want to explain,” Christopher says.

  “Go enjoy your moment in the sun, Chris. You should be talking to all the journalists, not me. You need to capitalize on this,” Kate says, safely back in agent mode, which is far less painful than ex-girlfriend mode.

  “I hope you’re coming to the after-party,” he says.

  “I’ll try,” Kate says, but we both know she won’t.

  As Christopher disappears into the crowd, I turn to Kate.

  “Are you okay?” I ask as her cell phone starts ringing.

  “Saved by the bell,” she says. She reads the caller ID. “Okay, Lola, here’s the other disaster I’m dealing with. Hello,” she says, clicking on the speaker.

  “The eagle has landed in Cannes. Let all prepare to rejoice and let Kate be down waiting for me in the lobby of the Hôtel Du Cap in ten minutes,” Nic Knight’s voice booms. The only thing worse than thinking it was a good idea for my brother to date my best friend is thinking it was a good idea for Kate to put one of her most loose-cannon clients, Nic Knight, in my father’s own bid for the Palme d’Or, San Quentin Cartel. Nic makes Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke, and Robert Downey Jr. 1.0 look like paragons of sobriety and self-control.

  “I’ll be there soon, Nic,” she says, before hanging up. “Do you believe this shit?”

  “What’s with the fake accent? He sounds like Ricardo Montalban,” I say.

  “More bullshit. He says he’s gonna stay in character until after the premiere. I’ve never met a more pretentious, full-of-himself actor in my life, and I’ve met a lot of ’em. But I’m just glad he actually made it here. He let his passport expire, and you have no idea the strings I had to pull to get him a new one in twenty-four hours. Not to mention Nic violated parole again by causing a public disturbance when he went commando into the hot mugwort tea pool of the all-women’s spa in Koreatown and missed another mandatory drug test. I had to bribe his parole officer with premiere tickets and a free trip to Cannes just so he can personally make sure Nic stays out of trouble.”

  “I was going to offer you a trade but now I’m not so sure,” I say. I’ve been having major headaches with a certain supermodel who seems hell-bent on finalizing her fittings for a jail cell instead of for Julian’s runway show, which is only four days away.

  “I gotta go, I’ll call you later,” Kate says.

  “Good luck with Nic,” I say before Kate walks away down the Palais steps.

  I head off to find Julian when my own cell starts chirping.

  “Hello?” I ask.

  “I just left Grace Frost’s office,” Coz, the Senior Bitchitor at Vain magazine says over the phone line. “I simply cannot imagine why you’ve been calling her. I’m returning the call on her behalf.”

  I feel my stomach plummet to the floor along with our chances of being in Vain, the hottest fashion magazine around. I wouldn’t have even dreamed of calling the editor in chief herself, except that Coz left me no choice. I had to call Grace Frost. Julian’s new bridal collection deserves to be on the cover of Vain. And without it, I’m not even sure if there will be a JT Inc. any longer.

  “I, um, well, I can explain,” I stumble and imagine Coz on the other end of the phone, basking in this moment from behind her big black sunglasses.

  “As much as I’d derive immense pleasure from listening to you grovel for the next few hours, I’m actually really busy so I’m going to cut to the chase,” Coz says. “I called my friends at Vogue, Elle, Bazaar, and Marie Claire and I know that there are no other offers for a Julian Tennant cover. Did you imagine for one second that I wouldn’t check?”

  “I—” I shouldn’t have lied to Grace Frost’s assistant. But can you blame me? I’m desperate and I’m not Criss Angel or God or Stacy London, so what else could I do? It’s taken me my entire twenty-seven years to find a career that I love and I’m actually good at, so I’m going to do whatever it takes to get the world’s most talented designer that I can’t seem to make famous no matter how hard I try on the cover of Vain.

  “I’m still speaking. I’ll let you know when it’s your turn,” Coz says. God I hate her. “We’re going to give you the cover and a twelve-page layout inside to coincide with the release of Four Weddings and a Bris in August.”

  “You’re what?!” I ask, flabbergasted. Julian beat out John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Marchesa, and Jason Wu to be one of the four designers to create wedding dresses for Baz Luhrmann’s latest musical extravaganza, also set to premiere at Cannes. It stars Hollywood’s hottest supernova, Saffron Sykes, the Best Actress Oscar winner who has Spielberg, the Coen brothers, and Clint Eastwood all fighting to work with her—and pay her twenty mil—all at the ripe old age of twenty-five. Could it possibly be that Coz is our miracle worker after all? “Is this a joke?”

  “Does it sound like I’m joking?” Coz says icily. Other than sounding as if she’s got a pair of her Dior studded platform skyscrapers shoved up her flat bum, I can’t tell if she’s serious or not. Could she be serious? “Are you listening?” she demands.

  “I’m here,” I say, still in shock.

  “Just so we’re clear, I’m not doing this for you or Julian,” she says, as if she’s ever done anything for me—or Julian. Except waterboard our careers. “I’m doing it for Chili.”

  “Chili?” I repeat. That’s Charles “Chili” Lu, fashion’s rising wunderkind, who Coz thinks is the second coming. And did I mention the kid is only sixteen? Yes, sixteen. He’s accomplished more in his sixteen years than I have in all of my twenty-seven. Chili was the first winner of Cutthroat Couture, the reality TV show brainchild of Vain’s very own Coz, its most tart-tongued judge. He also created wedding gowns for Baz’s film. Except Baz and Saffron weren’t clamoring for gowns with iPod portals and solar panels after all. So Baz replaced Chili with Julian and Coz forced us to hire the Christian Siriano wannabe as Julian’s assistant after convincing Baz that it would be bad PR for his movie to draw attention to firing a designer on a film where the costuming is everything. Chili’s transition over to our team would make all appear to be smooth sailing.

  “Grace agreed that it was a complete travesty that Chili’s divine wedding gowns ended up on Baz’s cutting room floor, so she thought it was a wonderful idea to let his gowns see the light of day in Vain.”

  I know that Coz is speaking but I can’t compute what’s she’s actually saying.

  “What about Julian?” I’m finally able to get out.

  “Saffron and Cricket will do the cover together. Saffron will wear Chili and Cricket can wear Julian,” Coz says. My Best Actress Forever (BAF), Cricket Curtis, landed the part of Saffron’s wisecracking sidekick in Four Weddings and a Bris. “I’ve already booked Patrick Demarchelier, Gucci Westman, and Orlando Pita and called the Du Cap and arranged to shoot in their gardens. Chili and I are flying out tomorrow. Jusqu’à demain. Bisous. Bisous,” she says, and then just as abruptly hangs up.

  I try and recover from the Coz tsunami that just hit me. So what if Julian has to share the cover with little Chili Lu? At least Julian is going to be on the cover of Vain. This could catapult Julian into becoming the next Vera Wang. He could rule the Hollywood brides. Everything I’ve killed myself for as CEO of Julian Tennant Inc.

  Oh god. Oh no. I still haven’t actually asked Cricket or Saffron if they’d be willing to pose for the cover. What if they say no?

  My head is spinning. I feel faint. I speed-dial Cricket. It goes straight to voice mail. I leave her a very long rambling, bumbling, begging message.

  I contemplate hurling myself down the Palais steps, the most prestigious red carpet in the world, but decide against it. I’m fairly certain that the throng of international paparazzi and fans camped out at the bottom of the steps would only break my fall. Not to mention the last thing I want is another video of me all over TM
Z.

  I drop to my knees on the red carpet and clasp my hands together.

  Please Rob Pattinson, please Rob Pattinson, let Cricket and Saffron agree to pose together for the cover of Vain. Please.

  “What are you doing?” Julian asks. “This is the red carpet, not a mosque.”

  I look up at Julian. “I can explain.”

  2

  being bi-lolar

  Six months earlier

  I pull the sheets off the Ligne Roset Nomade couch in Julian’s living room and stow them in a closet already crammed with fabric samples. “Nomad” is exactly how I feel. Julian and I still don’t have new office space, and I haven’t been able to find an affordable apartment, even in this dismal market. Which means I’ll have to keep living and working (at least Monday through Friday) with Julian under his twenty-foot ceilings until we find a new studio, I find my own apartment—or I strangle Julian with one of his Hermès ascots. I rub my sore neck and do a couple quick Down Dogs to get the kinks out. After more than a hundred days on that sofa, I feel like I need a body brace. Everything in Julian’s monochromatic, minimalist SoHo loft is Elle Decor–worthy but none of it is actually comfortable, most especially not the sofa, which is like sleeping on a slab of dessicated tofu, which only makes sense because Julian’s a die-hard vegan. So far he’s rejected every space we’ve looked at, citing bad feng shui, an unlucky address in numerology, or wonky chi. Naturally, he won’t even look in the Meatpacking District because he “doesn’t want to hear the ghostly screams of those poor murdered creatures.”

  I’ve done my best to transform Julian’s living room into a picture-perfect showroom for our meeting this afternoon with Coz, the Senior Bitchitor from Vain. She’s doing a “From Fashionista to Recessionista” story, and I’m desperate to get her to include some of Julian’s fall samples. I’ve changed the outfits on the mannequins ten times, straightened the hangers at least fifty times, repositioned the vase of peonies a dozen times, and removed any trace that the living room-slash-showroom is also my bedroom-slash-office. The cool, polished-concrete floors feel good on my bare feet as I head to the pristine stainless-and-white-marble kitchen in my cotton nightie.

  I flip on an electric teakettle and ready two white mugs with PG Tips, organic raw honey, and soy milk. Of course, there’s nothing in the fridge except a massive collection of take-out containers from every vegan restaurant in Manhattan. I don’t care what anyone says: soy chicken, turkey, beef, shrimp, pork, riblets, whatever—it all tastes like spongy Play-Doh. There, I said it. I hate tofu. I don’t get this cultish enchantment with meat pretenders. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by Lev, who actually has real food in his fridge and makes me the most delicious meals when I’m in L.A. I’ve been so busy with the company, I haven’t had time to shop for anything, let alone go apartment hunting. I need to find my own place where there isn’t a ban on meat. And then I need to convince Lev to move to Manhattan and into said apartment with me. Suppressing a shudder, I swallow god only knows what made out of soy from The V-Spot.

  My cell chirps.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Hey, Lo,” Cricket says. Her voice is trembling.

  “Cricket?! It’s five-thirty a.m. in L.A. Is everything okay? What are you doing up so early?”

  “I can’t sleep. I’m freaking out. Do you realize it’s been six months already?”

  “Cricket, you’re lucky you’re alive,” I remind her. “You were going a hundred-fifty miles an hour when you spun out.” And got fired off of Days of Thunder 2 when she skidded off the practice track with Jeff Gordon in Fontana and totaled a hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar custom racing car—and her career.

  “Well, I don’t feel lucky. This was my big break and I blew it, Lo. I was supposed to be the Next Nicole Kidman and now I’d be grateful if someone could get me a job babysitting her kid.” Cricket pauses, takes a deep breath, and then, as if she’s delivering the worst news imaginable, says, “I took that job with Margery Simkin last week.”

  “Why do you sound so horrified?” I ask, unaccustomed to hearing Cricket sound anything less than sunny. Kate and I have been enjoying the personal portable solar radiation machine we call Cricket for a decade. In fact, Kate and I call 2000 B.C., as in, Before Cricket, The Dark Years. As in, before we became one name: Lokaticket. “Margery was the casting director for Avatar. Maybe she can get you a part in Avatar 2.”

  “That’s what I was hoping, but I’m nothing but a lowly assistant. I’m stuck picking up Margery’s Labradoodle from daycare and doing off-camera readings opposite the actors who are auditioning for the parts I should be auditioning for. Lo, I studied with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I have a degree from Juilliard. Do you know what my last audition was for? Cialis. A commercial for freaking erectile dysfunction.”

  “That sucks. I hope you were up for the lead,” I say. It’s not just that Cricket’s a highly trained actress, it’s that she’s really, really good. When Kate signed her to CAA as one of her first clients and Cricket nabbed that lead, it looked as though she’d finally gotten the break she deserved.

  “I had five callbacks. And I still didn’t get the part because I was too tall next to the guy they ended up casting,” Cricket says, then quietly adds. “Lo, I’m barely making the rent.”

  “Do you need some money, Cricket?” I ask her, though I’m barely scraping by myself. Being CEO of Julian Tennant means living paycheck to paycheck at this point. Keeping my business and my relationship afloat has meant emptying out my bank account on travel—bicoastal love affairs are killer—along with fifty million other expenses.

  “Oh, Lo, thanks for the offer, but I’ll be okay. I’m just stressed. CAA’s going to drop me, I know it. I feel awful for me—and for Kate. Thank God I was able to get out of escrow on that house I bought. I’m going to be in this teensy little guesthouse forever.” Cricket’s been living in Viggo Mortensen’s 125-square-foot studio guesthouse on his property in Venice for the last five years. Aside from our friendship, it’s been the only constant in her life. Unless you’d call her string of romances a constant. Cricket falls “deeply in love” every other month. If it’s not the yoga instructor from her vinyasa flow class at Yoga Works, then it’s the struggling screenwriter she met typing hopefully away in the corner of the Palihouse, or her scene partner in Larry Moss’s acting class.

  “Okay, yes, that sucks, but there are worse things than getting to see Viggo’s ass every time he goes for a midnight skinny dip,” I remind her.

  “Don’t you get it?” Cricket wails. “I’m never going to have a bathtub, washer and dryer, or a parking spot. I really believed I was finally going to make it and now here I am—still.”

  “Cricket, it’s going to be okay,” I say, hoping I’m right, worried that I’m not. It took tremendous luck and balls for my BFF Kate to talk Jerry Bruckheimer into taking on Cricket, a complete unknown, for the lead in his next blockbuster. And not even a bat of an eyelash for him to fire Cricket after the car crash, which totally wasn’t her fault. “There’ll be something else. You’ve just got to be patient. Kate’s not going to give up on you. I won’t let her. She’ll find you something even better.”

  After the accident, when Cricket told me and Kate that she was going to take her busted ribs and pour herself into a new part, we applauded the optimism and light that we’d grown accustomed to her bringing to even the darkest moments. Then, when she told us she’d be playing Hamlet in an all-women’s Shakespeare troupe, we thought maybe she’d lost her mind in the accident along with her chance at the Big Screen.

  We thought wrong. On opening night, when Kate and I found the theater on Santa Monica Boulevard nestled between an S&M paraphernalia shop and an erotic bookstore, we opted for the back row for fear that Cricket might catch us asleep during the three-hour show—and because that’s where the seats looked cleanest. To say that she blew our hair back would be an understatement. More like, every hair on our bodies was standing on end by the end of the three hours. We
were on our feet clapping hysterically with rivers of mascara running down our faces. Kate tried to get as many agents and casting directors to see it as possible, but getting people to the theater in L.A. might be as hard as persuading Heidi Montag to stop staging plastic boob near-nip-slips. Let alone, the Dragonfly Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood—a.k.a. “Boy Town”—where the main attraction is Point Break Live!—the stage adaptation of the Keanu Reeves movie. Kate at least got the L.A. Weekly there to review it. And they called Cricket reminiscent of a young Meryl Streep—okay, so the ads for Girls, Girls, Girls and Add Three Inches on the same page was a little distracting. Still, it was a damn good review. Even if Lokaticket were the only ones to ever read it.

  “Enough about me,” Cricket says, sniffling. “I’m so deeply sick of myself. Tell me about you? How are you?”

  “I’m doing okay. But I should really get going. We have the Vain Bitchitor coming this afternoon to see the collection, and I have a ton to get through before I get on my plane back to L.A. tonight.”

  “Okay, well, knock ’em dead. Call me later and tell me how it goes. I’m going to go light another career candle and do an acting invocation. Thanks for talking me off the sill—again. Talk to you later.”

  Click.

  Poor Cricket. I’ve never heard her this upset before. I have to call Kate. It’s not that she doesn’t care about Cricket. It’s that she’s been killing herself to prove to Bryan Lourd that he made the right call taking her in as a junior agent last year. She’s got her two hottest clients, Saffron Sykes and Nic Knight, on the front burner. I’ve got to convince her to take Cricket off the back burner.

  I open Julian’s bedroom door, set the PG Tips teas on the nightstand, toss the drapes open, and throw back the sheets to find Julian sound asleep in nothing more than a pair of tighty whities and a black satin sleeping mask with the words DO NOT DISTURB stitched in hot pink.