Beneath a Starlet Sky Read online

  “Cricket, we have to make a run for it. Don’t let go of my hand,” I whisper into her ear and then we both start running. The journalists and photogs try and follow us, but thankfully Crimini’s hulking security team shows up and blocks their path. I pull Cricket into one of the bedrooms.

  “Are you with Markus?” I ask when we’re finally alone.

  Cricket can’t even meet my eyes. “I don’t know. I’m just so confused. I wasn’t prepared for any of this and Markus, he really understands what I’m going through, and well, one thing led to another … I can’t believe someone was filming us the whole time. I’m just so freaked out.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, feeling a little bit betrayed. Cricket tells me everything. At least she used to.

  “I’m so sorry, Lo. I haven’t told anyone. Markus didn’t want it to become public given his deal with Saffron,” she says.

  “Deal? What deal? Wait … so, I’m the public now?”

  “Of course you’re not. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that Saffron and Markus swore me to secrecy. She’s so afraid that her being gay is going to kill her career, and Markus just really loves her and wants to protect her. The three of us were hanging out all the time, and then Markus and I started talking a lot, and then everything just kind of happened.” Cricket shoots me a pleading look. “But I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. You have to know that, right?” she says, but suddenly I’m not so sure anymore. Cricket’s turning into someone I don’t recognize. “Lola, I’m so sorry for all of this. I’m scared I’ve totally lost myself. I never meant to hurt anyone—most especially not you and Julian. Are you guys going to be okay?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I’m not at all sure. “I better go find Julian. Are you going to be okay here by yourself for a little bit?”

  “Yes, go. Tell him I’m so sorry,” she says.

  “I’m sorry too,” I say. “For all of this.”

  It takes me forever to find Julian on a boat this big but when I finally do he’s hanging off the railings in a quiet corner.

  “We’re ruined. It’s over,” Julian says. “I feel like jumping overboard. No one is even talking about the gowns. All anyone wants to talk about is Saffron and Markus.”

  “It’s not as bad as you think,” I say. “I know it seems that way right now, but I’ll find a way to spin this. Kate’s always telling me that any press is good press. It’s going to be okay. We’ve overcome worse than this before.”

  “It’s not going to be okay. Not this time,” Julian says, his voice so somber, so serious. How can he be so sure? “I can’t believe anyone would do this to us.”

  “Not anyone. Chili and Coz,” I say.

  “Are you sure it’s them?” Julian asks.

  “Who else would do this?” I ask. “Coz has wanted to sabotage us ever since her little Chili’s stock started falling. Have you seen Stefano? I need to find him and try and explain.”

  “He already left,” Julian says. “Coz got to him before I did and told him that the Vain cover is off since Saffron and Markus don’t seem to be a couple. Stefano said he’ll see what the buyers say, but he wants me to fire you, Lola.”

  “Oh,” is all I’m able to get out. They want me fired. LVMH wants me fired.

  “I told them they’d have to fire me too if they were going to fire you. But LVMH owns my name, Lola. If I walk away, I’m walking away from my name.”

  “There’s no way you’re quitting,” I tell him. “Your work today is genius, Julian, and when people stop yapping about Cricket and Markus, they’re going to recognize that and reward it. There’s no sense in us both losing our jobs over this.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he says, wrapping me in his arms. And I’m thankful he’s got me. Because I’m about to fall on the floor from the oppressive weight of all of it. No tears come, even though I want to cry. It’s as though my body knows not to let me fall apart because that would be too much to take on top of everything else. So instead the shock kicks in. Pure shock. With our Oscar success from last year, I thought we were going to make it, but that red carpet just got ripped right out from under me. When I finally break free of Julian’s embrace, the pain in his eyes is too much for me to bear.

  “Julian, I just … I need a minute alone, do you mind?”

  “Of course not. Come find me when you’re ready,” he says and walks away, blowing me a silent kiss.

  I slide down the side of the boat and onto the deck. Even if it’s just for a minute I need something solid beneath me. I can’t believe that LVMH really wants me fired. I mean, I don’t really blame them, but I can’t believe it’s actually happening. I’m about to lose everything that I’ve worked so hard for.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting on the deck when I feel a steadying hand on my shoulder.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Julian told me everything. I’m so sorry about all of this,” Lev says, sitting down on the deck next to me.

  “I can’t believe I’m about to lose everything,” I say, my head spinning.

  “You still have me,” Lev says, kissing me and as I look into his green eyes—right below the alarmingly groomed brows I still can’t get over—I want desperately to believe him. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted. I want the doctor I fell in love with in the emergency room at Cedars and not the one on TV. Do I still have him? I want to ask Lev. But as I look into my fiancé’s eyes, really look, I feel like he’s right in front of me. So what if his eyebrows are waxed? He’s still my Lev, my love.

  “I love you, Doctor Luke Levin,” I say.

  “I love you too,” Lev says, kissing me again. “I know that you’ll figure out a way to save your job. You’ll think of something.”

  “I wish I had as much faith in myself as you have in me,” I say.

  “Hey Lev, are you ready, we really need to get going.” I look up to see a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a tan Varvatos suit standing over us.

  “Lola, this is Buzz,” Lev says, standing up.

  I struggle to my feet. “I know who this is,” I say, reaching my hand out to Buzz Keating. And I don’t need Lev to tell me what he’s about to say, because I already know it in my bones.

  “Buzz represents the Coen brothers. He was on the plane with us and he wants me to meet with them right now. Do you mind, we’ll only be an hour,” he says with trepidation.

  “Right now?” I ask. Is this a joke? Lev wants to go and meet the Coen brothers right now? Could a worse time even exist? I need him now. Me, his fiancée. Not the Coen brothers.

  “It was really hard to arrange the meeting at all. The Coen brothers have a very tight schedule, so I’m afraid it has to be right now,” Buzz says, sounding genuinely apologetic, which only makes it sting more. “This is an enormous opportunity for Lev’s career.”

  “Which career would that be?” I ask. My suddenly screechy voice sounds foreign in my ears. I try to gulp the words back but they keep coming.

  “Lola, please don’t do this right now,” Lev says. “Buzz, I’m so sorry. Is there any other time we could meet them?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Buzz says.

  Lev looks at me and I can see in his eyes how badly he wants to go to this meeting. How is it that everything’s going so horribly wrong? What’s happening to Lev? He’s about to lose himself to Hollywood and I don’t know how to get him back. The existential crisis I’m having seems to be flooding my body, lifting me above the boat, above the Mediterranean, it seems to be lifting me into the sky, though I know I’m right here standing in front of Lev and Buzz.

  When it comes to me, it’s as if my body comes back down to the ground too with a strangely inaudible crash. I’ve got it. I know how to save my job. I know how to save our company. I have to get to Saffron. I have to talk to her. Lev will have to save himself.

  “Lev, you go. Go meet the Coen brothers. I’ve got to see someone right away,” I say.

  “Are you sure?” he asks.
>
  “Yes, I’m sure,” I say. “Buzz, it was nice to meet you,” I say, shaking his hand. “I’ll see you back at the room,” I say, kissing Lev good-bye.

  He’s not ten feet away when I dial Kate. It goes straight to voice mail.

  “Call me as soon as you get this,” I say. “You’ve got to get me a meeting with Saffron. I’ll explain why when we talk.”

  Once I’m back in my room at the Martinez I turn on the bathwater. I’m desperate to rinse off as much of this day as I can. My cell trills as a new text appears.

  WHAT I’D LIKE TO KNOW LOLA IS WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO DO WITH ALL OF THOSE OSTRICHES?

  —COZ

  I hit DELETE. I see my laptop open on the desk. It’s sheer masochism, I know, but I have to find out what people are saying about the show. When the darkened computer screen comes to life, I find myself gasping for air. It’s Perez Hilton, and there’s a photo of Lev with one of Perez’s hearts scrawled around his image. I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: the fact that Lev is on Perez Hilton again or that he was looking at Perez Hilton. He didn’t even know who Paris Hilton was before we met. I recognize the photo. It’s a shot from my mother’s party last night. A photograph that I’ve been removed from—airbrushed out as though I don’t even exist in the life of Doctor Luke Levin. The man I’m marrying. The love of my life. All of a sudden I feel so small, and so dispensable. I feel like I could just vanish and no one would care. Not LVMH. Not Lev. No one.

  I opt to skip the bath and go straight to bed. Where are my pajamas? I can’t find them anywhere. I decide to grab a T-shirt from Lev’s suitcase. When I see the Lenox Hill emblem at the top of the piece of paper peeking out from a stack of Lev’s clothes, my heart starts beating as though I’ve just finished running a marathon, which in a way I have. As I pull the stationery out from the pile of clothes, the words start to blur together on the page:

  Dear Dr. Levin,

  We at Lenox Hill Hospital are very pleased to offer you the position of Resident in Emergency Medicine.…

  I can barely think above the blood pounding in my ears. I scan the date on the letter. Lev has known about the offer from Lenox Hill for more than a week and has been lying to me about it. Just as I’m spinning out into how he could possibly have done this, I hear the key in the door.

  “Hey hon,” he says. “The Coen brothers are going to screen test me when we’re back in L.A. Isn’t that so coo—” He stops as he sees me holding the letter in my shaking hands.

  “How could you do this?” I ask, then melt down onto the lounge chair that is luckily right next to me. My legs just can’t hold me up anymore.

  “Were you going through my things?” he asks, shocked.

  “That’s kind of beside the point, isn’t it? But no, if it makes you feel any better, I was looking for my pajamas and instead I found this.” I shake the letter in his face.

  “We need to talk,” Lev says as he collapses onto the edge of the bed. And for the first time I realize that he’s been carrying around the weight of this as well. “I keep waiting for it to be the right time and now I’ve learned the hard way that there’s never a right time. I just know how much pressure you’ve been under and I haven’t wanted to add to it. And now I’ve caused you pain because you think I’ve been lying to you. Really, I’ve just wanted to protect you from what I know won’t make you happy. But Lola, I’m not sure I want to be a doctor anymore. I want to pursue this acting thing. All my life it was just expected of me that I was going to become a doctor. Both my parents are surgeons. Their parents are surgeons. I feel like I never really had a choice. My first word was ‘scalpel,’ for god’s sake. I can always go back to being a doctor, but I’m really happy when I’m acting. I’ve never felt this kind of happy before … except with you.”

  “But what does this mean?” I beg and feel pathetic as I’m doing it.

  “I’m going to resign from Cedar’s.”

  I feel the walls to the world I’ve created coming down in a giant heap, the castle crumbling in around me, the moat that I thought protected our world invaded, and the sword of the invader going right through my heart.

  “I didn’t sign up for this,” I say, my head drowning, my hands the only thing keeping it afloat. “I can’t do this,” I say through tears that are coming out in gasps, in a fight for the oxygen that seems to have left my body.

  “Why can’t you support me and love me for who I am?”

  “Because this isn’t who you are,” I say. And then the red-faced monster suffocating in my chest lets out a scream. “You’re not an actor!”

  “But maybe I am!” Lev yells back. And this is when I realize, as I look out the window beyond the pool, beyond Diddy’s and Paul Allen’s yachts, beyond this week, beyond Cannes, out to the horizon where the sun is just about to set, that this isn’t about who Lev is. This is about who I am and what I’m willing to give up, what I’m willing to risk to stay true to myself. Even if I’m not entirely sure who I am, in my guts I know what I want and I’m going to have to love myself enough to risk it all.

  “I’m sorry, Lev,” I say, turning around, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it. It’s not right for me, for my life, for the life that I want, that I’ve wanted for us. I love you,” I say, smoothing my hand gently across his forehead. “You should have your dreams. You should fulfill every last one of them and I shouldn’t keep you from them.” And as I slip the beautiful princess-cut diamond ring from my finger, I give it a kiss as I look into his eyes. Then I hand it back to him and give Luke Levin a final kiss good-bye.

  16

  “I can’t believe you found a Ferris wheel here,” I say to Kate, who’s seated beside me, our little passenger cart swaying gently to and fro as we look out at the Med sparkling way down below.

  “I know how much you love them. Remember our first one?” she asks.

  “Of course I do. In Texas, when you were PA-ing on Papa’s movie.”

  “God, remember how much I hated you then?”

  “Well, you were an uptight asshole,” I remind her. We had the kind of catfights you can only have when you’re sixteen and ambitious, but it was Kate who’d picked me up off the ground after a big fight with Actor Boyfriend No. 1—the very first time I’d succumbed to Actorholism. We’d cemented our friendship atop the Ferris wheel nearby, and ever since it’s been our post-breakup ritual. We must have racked up a million Frequent Flyer miles on the wheel in Santa Monica.

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” I say, my spirits lifted already.

  “That’s what best friends are for, right?” Kate says and despite everything that’s gone on between us, I know that she means it.

  “From up here everything looks so small and insignificant. Somehow losing Lev and probably my job doesn’t sting as much,” I say.

  “Lo, I’m so sorry that I ever tried to sign Lev. I realize now how selfish that was, and that there are some things that are actually more important than work,” Kate says.

  “Thanks, Kate. And don’t think it’s gone unnoticed that you haven’t checked your BlackBerry even once,” I say.

  “It’s not easy, but I’m trying.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “How could I be so wrong about Lev?”

  “Hollywood is seductive; it can suck even the best people in,” Kate says.

  “I just never thought it would happen to him. But if that’s what he really wants, I don’t want to keep him from it. I just can’t be a part of it,” I say. And as we spin around and I look down at all the festival-goers who are just tiny specks from way up here, I feel myself getting even clearer. “I don’t want a life in Hollywood. I know that now. I’m really happy in New York. Where I’m free of my family’s shadow. I finally feel like I’ve found myself. And I don’t want to lose me again.”

  “I hate that I’m losing you to New York, but I really envy you for figuring out what you want and staying true to yourself,” Kate says. “You’re going to be okay, Lola.”

  “Yeah, I’m goin
g to be okay,” I say, surprised to find that I actually believe it. “But what the hell am I going to do in New York if LVMH fires me?”

  “They’re not going to fire you,” Kate says.

  “Have you seen the papers today? No one is talking about Julian’s divine wedding dresses. All anyone is writing and blogging about is Cricket and Markus and Saffron. It’s a disaster. It’s all over. I even saw it on the BBC and CNN. I feel like I’ve let everyone down. Julian won’t get out of the fetal position, and Stefano won’t even return my calls or e-mails. And without the Vain shoot, what am I supposed to tell Stefano? I would fire me too,” I say. “I just hope they don’t want to pull Julian’s financial backing. I want to kill Chili and Coz. I don’t have any proof yet, but I know it’s them. I just know it.”

  “That’s why you have to convince Saffron that she still needs to do the Vain cover,” Kate says.

  “What do you mean? You told me she said there’s absolutely no way she’ll do it,” I say.

  “And you told me that you could change her mind, so I convinced her to at least hear you out. She’s expecting you at her place this afternoon,” Kate says.

  “What?! Oh my god, Kate,” I squeal. “That’s amazing! I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Don’t thank me until she’s on the cover,” Kate says.

  “It doesn’t matter what she says, thank you for getting me the meeting and sticking your neck so far out for me,” I say in awe of my best friend.

  “It’s the least I could do after everything that’s happened,” Kate says.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Have you talked to Cricket? Do you think she’s going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s going to be okay. She just needs to lay low for a while, but she’s going to be fine,” Kate says.

  “Do you think this thing between her and Markus is real?”

  “I have no idea. You know Cricket; the girl loves being in love. I think she just got totally overwhelmed by everything, and Markus was there to sweep in and save the day.”