Margot lowers her voice. “Like, sexually?” She’s heard stories of actresses buying their way onto the sets of Clarke’s films with certain “favors.” She knows he sometimes demands meetings with the next hot young thing, and if she doesn’t comply with his demands, she disappears from the scene, blacklisted.
“Sexually, physically, psychopathically. Did you hear about the girl?”
“What girl?” A tray of glasses smashes nearby.
“Some model from Golden Point. I heard she was trying to get into acting, had been writing him letters. Then she just…disappeared.” Barbie clicks her fingers.
“Golden Point,” Margot murmurs.
“Apparently her folks are losing their minds. But Clarke will never be implicated.” Another toke.
“Why?”
“Because he’s famous,” Barbie replies, her vocal cords strained by the pot. “And powerful, and rich.” She blows out smoke.
“What’s her name?” Margot asks. “Wait—let me get a pen and paper. Actually, hand me one of those lipsticks, will you?”
“What?” Barbie sighs and lets her head hang heavily backward, gazing up at the stars.
“Give me one of those lipsticks in your bag.” Margot turns her left arm over, waits for Barbie to hand her a tube.
“Now, how do you spell it?”
Twelve
The sun wassharp the day Elsie first met Margot and Beverley. She held a palm to her eyes, cowered in its shade, felt as if the rays might slice her skin. She wore a new silk blouse for the occasion, something she’d never normally choose, and the tiny buttons at the back of her neck scratched terribly, as if the outfit knew it didn’t belong on her. She’d rolled the sleeves back in a vain bid to cool herself down, and her freckled forearms had already started to redden. Her English complexion would never get used to the California heat.
She glanced nervously at her shoes as she stood on the doorstep of what she knew was Beverley’s house, the house Bev had described in the letters they’d been exchanging for months.
As soon as Beverley opened the door—with that wide, beautiful face, those swimming-pool eyes, that thick head of blond hair—she felt frumpy. Bev’s house, too, was beautiful, filled with the sorts of products Elsie could never afford herself: a Sony TV, a pink Bell Princess telephone—the one with the light-up dial that seemed unnecessarily showy. She was led through the hallway to the kitchen, passinga living room filled with mustard furniture and that print of the beautiful Chinese woman that all fashionable people seemed to own. She practically balked when she saw the striking red-haired woman who must have been ten years older than her and Beverley leaning against the kitchen counter, a cigarette held to scarlet-painted lips. The smoke curled around her like something from those movie billboards you saw on Rodeo Drive. The woman lowered the cigarette and flashed a white smile. The kitchen clock ticked loudly above their heads. Elsie had been stunned.
This was not what she had expected the women—who had experienced exactly what she had experienced—to look like. In her mind, they were meek and apologetic. Women you wouldn’t look at twice on the street. Women who could be trampled by men, conned, deceived. Women just like her.
Beverley poured Elsie a drink, and the afternoon slipped into evening in a haze of Chardonnay and vodka cocktails. Elsie was not used to drinking cocktails. She spent her evenings with Dickens and Archimedes’ tangrams. So her thoughts soon felt fluid, dizzy. They ate food that Bev had prepared—a frozen Sara Lee lasagne—no one commenting on the fact that it was hugely overcooked, and they discussed their lives, their husbands, their unique and horrific shared experience. Elsie had to pinch herself on more than one occasion; things she had always concealed, things she had never dared share with anyone, were being splayed and dissected as if the women were chewing over the latest episode ofNaked City. She was struck by the intimacy of it all. Until then, her past had been a secret stored against her skin, hidden from sight, a private responsibility. In meeting them, she would have to cut herself open, show the blood.
Margot, Elsie felt, was overloud and, if she was honest, a bit obnoxious; she certainly didn’t seem as affected by her husband’s crimes as the gentler Beverley, who seemed so poised, so put together, but whosechildlike vulnerability slipped out now and then. Bev seemed to flinch whenever Margot derided their husbands.
“They’re animals,” Margot had quipped plainly, dabbing the corner of her mouth with a pinkie finger.
“Well…”
Margot widened her eyes at Beverley. “What do you mean,well…?”
“Henry was a good father,” Beverley countered hesitantly. “He doted on Benjamin. He bought him Christmas toys, made him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Hawaiian punch.”
“Hold on.” Margot held up a palm, and Elsie marveled at the familiarity between the women, their ease, their comfort in challenging each other.
“Does tossing a ball in the yard with your son excuse you from slitting girls’ throats?”
Elsie bristled, expecting Beverley to react in horror. Instead, Beverley continued calmly. “What I’m saying is that I believe he could have been both things at the same time: a dangerous man”—she opened a hand—“and a good father.” She opened the other next to it, like they were balancing scales.
Margot blew a raspberry. “That’s stupid.”
Elsie had watched, entranced by the interaction, as Beverley had tilted her head patiently and replied, “And what did Dr. Garvey say, Margot?”
Elsie would later discover that the women had been seen by the same psychologist after their husbands were arrested.
Margot rolled her eyes and parroted, in a crisp British accent, “ ‘You are to ban the wordstupidfrom your vocabulary.’ ” She took a drag on the cigarette she was holding loosely between her fingers. “But sometimes it just fits. Okay, not for you, Bev, but it does for some of the wives.”
