The Bette Davis Club Page 3

  I get the feeling I’m expected to comment favorably on all this. I do the best I can. “Sort of a female Ben Affleck?” I say.

  She slaps her palm against the sofa. “Exactly! You may or may not know this, Margo, but Hollywood is desperate for product these days. Stories are . . .” She gestures vaguely.

  “Hard to come by?” I say.

  She shakes her head. “I was going to say superfluous. Nowadays, it’s all marketing, names, computer graphics.”

  She gulps down wine, then adds, “Granted, you need a framework, something to hang it all on, a sort of, I don’t know—”

  “Plot?”

  “You could call it that. But, oh, there’s money to be made with the right concept and the right players, believe you me. Which is where you come in. This drama-queen behavior of Georgia’s. Running away on her wedding day! I won’t accept it. She’s booked to marry Malcolm Belvedere’s former stepson. Can you picture the doors that will open for her when she does that? For all of us?”

  “But you already know Malcolm,” I say. “I thought you’ve done five or six pictures with him.”

  “Knowing someone powerful,” she says, “isn’t like joining his family. Didn’t you see the Godfather movies? The Sopranos? In the end, it’s all about family. If Georgia marries Tully, our futures will be set.”

  Charlotte laughs as though she just remembered a joke. “Tully adores Georgia!” she says. “And she’s so . . . fond of him. I’m only thinking of everyone’s future happiness.”

  And, I imagine, future income.

  “Minutes ago,” Charlotte says, “I paid one of those trashy blonde bribesmaids—ha-ha—I mean, bridesmaids—to tell me where my daughter is. Lord, you should’ve seen this member of the wedding. It’s her navel that’s pierced, but the metal has obviously worked its way into her brain.”

  “Charlotte, I—”

  “In exchange for a used Louis Vuitton travel bag, a discount coupon for Lasik eye surgery, and a voucher good for a two-night stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel, this little stalk of celery ratted out her good friend Georgia. She says Georgia flew to Palm Springs—though whether she’s staying with friends or at a hotel, nobody knows. Well, it’s a small enough burg, Georgia won’t be hard to find. And Georgia won’t have much money; she can’t go far. So now, will you go after her?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t—”

  “I’ll pay you,” she says flatly.

  I give a sharp laugh. “Pay me? In what? Used luggage and hotel vouchers?”

  “Cash. A lot of it.”

  Charlotte knows I need money, but this is too much. No, absolutely not. I will not be sucked in. I will not put myself in the employ of my half sister; I will not make myself the female counterpart to Juven. I’d rather leap from a runaway train; I’d rather disco dance in hell; I’d rather—

  “How much?” I ask, surprising even myself with the question. “How much will you pay me?”

  “Forty thousand dollars.”

  I gape at her, my reluctance to pursue Georgia brought to a screeching halt by the image of the number forty followed by three fat zeroes. But Charlotte misinterprets my hesitation. She thinks I want more money.

  “Okay,” she says, holding up her hands. “I don’t have time to negotiate. Fifty thousand, plus expenses.” She belts back more port. Then she picks up the nearly empty decanter and stares at it. It’s crystal. Waterford or Baccarat. Like so many things in this house, it cost, I’m sure, a great deal.

  “Fifty large isn’t so bad,” Charlotte muses as she fondles the decanter. “I spent nearly that much on the wedding dress. If you bring even that back, let alone Georgia, I’ll get something out of my investment in you.” She puts down the decanter.

  “What if she refuses to see me?” I say.

  “That won’t happen.” She pats my knee. “Georgia likes you. You’re her favorite aunt.”

  “I’m her only aunt. And she hasn’t laid eyes on me since that time when she was thirteen and the two of you visited New York for about fifteen minutes and we all had lunch at Le Cirque.”

  Charlotte laughs in a chilly sort of way. “She thinks you’re fab. She loves the ‘Brit accent’ you do.”

  Okay, that was a really annoying remark, and I can’t let it go by.

  “This is my natural voice, Charlotte,” I say. “It’s not an affectation. I had to pick it up to fit in, to survive the pecking order in that wretched school I was sent to. I was so young when I got packed off to England, when I was . . . banished. After a while, talking like the other girls became a permanent part of me.”

  “All right,” she says. “I hear you. Being sent overseas was hard for you, and I’m sorry about it. You probably suffered Post-Dramatic Stress Disorder. Excuse me, I mean Traumatic. But none of that was my fault.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” I hesitate, then I plunge in the knife. “It was your mother’s.”

  “God, here we go!” Charlotte says. Discussion of Charlotte’s mother has never been a pleasant topic between the two of us. “That was years ago,” she says. “We were children. If you’re going to start . . . well, you’re just wasting time!”

  “Wasting time?” I say. “If your mother had done the decent thing and divorced Daddy, my mother might still be alive today. My whole life would have turned out differently.”

  Silence.

  I take out a cigarette and light it, not bothering to ask Charlotte if she minds. She is, after all, the person who gave me my first smoke, back when I was nine years old. I put the pack down on the table.

  “Pall Malls!” she says. She picks up the pack and studies it. “I thought you kicked these years ago.”

  “Did,” I say, taking a deep drag off my cigarette. “Started up again.”

  “When?”

  I let out a curl of smoke. “Last year.”

  “Oh. You mean because . . .” She clears her throat. “But even so, it’s incredibly unhealthy. It’s practically illegal, isn’t it?”

  I don’t answer. I tilt my head back and blow three perfect smoke rings. Something else she taught me to do.

  Charlotte puts down the cigarette pack, gets up, and walks over to the globe. She positions herself there, spreading both hands over the Arctic Ocean and patting the world with her fingertips, its cocaine-filled interior no doubt calling to her. Charlotte may have given up smoking, but she’s retained other vices.

  “All I’m asking you to do is find Georgia,” she says. “Find her and talk to her. Talk to her kindly, sympathetically—then ask her what the hell she thinks she’s doing!”

  “What if I fail?” I say. “What if I get to Palm Springs and I can’t find her or something goes wrong?”

  “Half.”

  “Just for trying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Plus expenses?”

  “Yes.”

  I think about the money Charlotte’s offering. It’s really all I can think about. Fifty thousand dollars disappears surprisingly fast in Manhattan. But it would buy me time. I could pay my creditors. And I’d have a month or two of not worrying about my shop or what to do with it. There’d be time to sort out my life, time to have drinks with Dottie. My treat.

  It’s in thinking about the money, picturing what it would be like to have that much ready cash, that I feel myself tumble down the rabbit hole. Charlotte, standing there, watches me fall, wills me to fall.

  I put down my glass of port. “Let’s say I do this.”

  “You will, won’t you?” she asks. She leans forward over the globe.

  “Let’s say I do. You know I don’t fly, so the fastest way for me to get to Palm Springs is by automobile. Which means I’ll need a car.”

  I watch Charlotte for her reaction to this statement. I’m worried she might challenge me on it. My driving record is a joke. Surely, my own half sister is aware of my reputation behind the wheel. She must know I no longer possess a valid driver’s license. A minor detail, but some people take these things seriously.

/>   “Can you loan me a car?” I press.

  “Yes. You can use Daddy’s.” She looks away. She’s embarrassed, I know. Though not about the car.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. For the first time today, I’m genuinely taken aback. “You can’t . . . you don’t mean the MG?”

  “I do,” Charlotte says. “Ha-ha. Poor word choice again. I should have said, Yes, the MG is exactly the car I mean.”

  Toward the end of his life, our father drove a red sports car, a classic 1955 MG TF. But when I was ten and Charlotte fifteen, our dad died from a heart attack. Since my own mum had passed on two years earlier, I was officially an orphan. Charlotte’s mother wanted nothing to do with the daughter of her dead husband’s dead mistress. So she sent me to live with my great-aunt Fiona, in England.

  Only Aunt Fiona and I did not get on. I was packed off again, this time to St. Verbian’s School for Girls, just outside London. There I lived in miserable exile for the next eight years, a free-spirited California girl who picked up an English accent simply to survive. And there I lived a bleak, lonely existence like . . . like Cinderella or Jane Eyre or young Princess Diana stuck with Charles.

  In the meantime, Charlotte and her mother, Irene, occupied the Malibu house. And all these years, I’d assumed the MG, like so many pieces of my childhood, was gone. I thought Irene had sold it. My shock is enormous. It’s as if Charlotte were telling me she had a time machine.

  “You have Daddy’s car?” I say.

  “Actually, it’s mine now.”

  “Yes, understood. But, I mean . . . my God, his car. Does it run?”

  “Certainly it runs. Do you think I expect you to push it to Palm Springs?” She inspects one of her plum-colored nails. “Mama hung on to all of Daddy’s things after he died. Not because she loved him. She didn’t. She kept everything out of plain old Catholic guilt. She honestly believed they’d meet in the afterlife, that he’d walk up to her in heaven or purgatory or some damn place and demand his golf clubs, a Tom Collins, and the car keys. Anyway, she always kept the car in perfect condition.”

  Perfect condition. I only wish someone had kept me in perfect condition. Still, the car, I’ll get to drive Daddy’s car!

  But wait a minute. What am I getting myself into? What is it exactly I’m agreeing to? Putting aside the car, certain other practicalities come crashing down. “I don’t have any cash,” I say. “I’ll need an advance or something.”

  Charlotte looks relieved to be off the subject of our father. She crosses to a writing desk and motions for me to come over. She picks up a leather handbag that’s lying on the desk. Rootling round in the bag, she pulls out several impressive credit cards, including an American Express Black Card, and hands them to me.

  She puts down the bag and reaches for her smartphone. “What’s your cell phone number?”

  “I haven’t one,” I say.

  The frozen look on her face tells me how inadequate this response is. Putting down her phone, she leans across the desk and retrieves a tiny clamshell phone from its charger. “I keep this old one as a spare,” she says. She hands me the phone and charger. “You never know when an emergency will turn up.”

  Or, I imagine, a clueless, cell phone–impoverished half sister.

  I turn the phone over in my hands, examining it. “I’ve never liked these things,” I say. “I know I’m old-fashioned, but I’ve always avoided having one. And if you call when I’m driving, I won’t answer. Driving and talking at the same time is not only illegal in many states but also dangerous. They’ve done studies.”

  Her mouth twitches. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to do that.”

  Something else occurs to me. “My bags—”

  “I sent Juven for them,” she says, not missing a beat. “He’s getting the car out too.”

  I realize what the “other thing” was that she asked Juven to take care of earlier. It was the car. For me.

  I look down at my dress. “I have to change,” I say.

  “There isn’t time. You can do that when you stop for gas.”

  Always a flair for theatrics, my half sister. Fine, I think, remember I’m wearing your Donna Karan. See if you get it back.

  Charlotte steps over to the French doors and opens them wide. The ocean air rushes in, filling the room with the scent of the sea. With a nod for me to join her, she passes through the doors and out onto the broad flagstone terrace. I drown my cigarette in my glass of port and follow her out into the sunlight.

  It’s there, as I’m standing on the terrace with Charlotte, that I look down and see it. Just like that, I see it. Looking past the terra-cotta planters and the marble balustrade, I catch sight of something so beautiful it takes my breath away.

  Below us, parked on the circular drive, is my father’s two-seater MG. Top down, candy-apple red, absolutely gorgeous. Rakish and wonderful, its wire wheels and chrome work gleam in the sun.

  I haven’t seen that car since I was ten years old. I forget that I’m broke and three thousand miles from home, that my half sister is a cocaine addict and my niece some sort of fugitive bride. Instead, I remember how our father looked at the wheel of his favorite automobile—elegant, laughing, full of life.

  “Oh, Charlotte,” I say. “It’s beautiful. What fun it must be to own it.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she says impatiently.

  I turn to her, but she avoids my gaze.

  “I mean,” she says, “I never drive it. Even though Mama’s been dead for years, the only reason I keep it is because she did. I have Juven take it in regularly for service.”

  She pulls at one of her diamond earrings. “You know, Margo, Daddy’s car doesn’t hold the same memories for me that it does for you. I see it, and I think, There’s the little toy my father drove away in on all those bright sunny mornings—when he went to cheat on my mother.”

  Well, I think, that’s your version. But this is no time to begin arguing again about our parents.

  I’m about to descend the stone steps, when Charlotte touches my arm. “There’s something else I want you to do. Georgia took things that belong to me. I want them back.”

  “You mean the wedding dress?” I say.

  “That too. But besides the dress there are other things. Tell her I want my possessions returned immediately.”

  “What are these items?” I say.

  “Doesn’t matter, she knows.” Charlotte’s voice is controlled, but insistent. “Make it clear I’m not kidding around about this.”

  I sigh. “Tell me something, please. Are you sending me to Palm Springs to retrieve your daughter or your property?”

  “The whole kid and caboodle. Ha-ha. I believe I mean kit and caboodle.” She frowns. “What I mean is, for fifty grand, I expect it all.” We start down the steps.

  We’re almost at the bottom of the stairs when a man—fortyish, pale, not terribly tall—comes hurrying round the side of the house. He’s wearing an Armani tux and clutching a pair of suitcases.

  Even in a tuxedo this fellow has the tweedy, self-absorbed look of the professional college student. The rumpled hair, eyeglasses, and befuddled gaze of an absentminded professor. He comes to an abrupt halt, apparently confused by . . . other people? Life? His own thoughts? His eyes dart round like a possum considering how best to cross the road.

  I laugh at the sight of him. “Who’s that?” I say.

  “The groom,” Charlotte says. “Tully Benedict. He’s going with you.”

  I knew it! I knew Charlotte would play dirty.

  “No!” I say. “I won’t. I absolutely won’t!”

  “Yes, you will. Number one, because if you don’t, I won’t pay you. Number two, because Tully is your driver. And number three, because you and I both know, Little Mar, that you don’t have a valid driver’s license in the state of California, the continent of North America, or anywhere else in this godforsaken world.”

  We go on like this a minute or two, though I know it’s pointless. Charlotte will h
ave her way. When, at last, there’s a break in our bickering, I glance back at the MG and get a shock. Despite the fact that no wedding has occurred, a group of drunken wedding guests are spraying shaving cream all over my father’s car.

  “Stop!” I cry. “Please, stop!”

  Too late. Shaving cream hearts decorate the car’s hood, pink rose petals dot the tan leather seats, and a bouquet of red and white balloons floats from the spare tire mounted at the rear. Vinyl clings on the car doors proclaim “Just Married!” and “Love Machine!” The effect is oddly festive considering, when you think about it, that we’re in the midst of calamity.

  I decide not to think about it. Charlotte’s sense of urgency is contagious. So is the temptation to earn fifty thousand dollars for what, presumably, will be a day’s work. There’s also the fact that I’ve consumed two double martinis, two glasses of port, and, all right, yes, the teensiest snort of cocaine when I had my head inside that globe in the library. So you could say I’m not altogether sober. Though I fear sobriety may come all too quickly.

  I therefore have the impulse to leave immediately, certain that if I don’t, God, or possibly Steven Spielberg—didn’t I see him among the guests?—will direct the earth to open up and swallow the entire wedding party.

  With Charlotte waving me on, I make my way to the car, open the passenger door, and get in. I have the distinct impression this is what it’s like to suffer a near-death experience.

  Tully Benedict gets in as well, on the driver’s side. There’s a hint of beard stubble on his face, which doesn’t surprise me even though it’s his wedding day. Already I can tell he’s the sort of person who has to put up Post-it Notes to remind himself to shave.

  Now that I see him up close, I note that Tully has a kind, interesting face. The sort of face that, ordinarily, I would find intriguing. But at the moment, his expression is extremely . . . tense. Well, I expect he’s upset. The poor man has just been jilted. He doesn’t introduce himself or in any way acknowledge my presence, except to ask where the seat belts are.