Connie, alarmed, sat up and swung her legs round to face Elise. She swiftly changed sun loungers and embraced her. ‘You’re here because I love you,’ she said. ‘Because I need you. Because you’re special. No one I’ve ever met has made me think these things.’
‘So I’m here for you.’
Connie thought about this. ‘Well, yes. I suppose you are. But you’re more than welcome to make of the experience what you will. I didn’t drag you here, El. I want you to enjoy it.’
‘But you never say those things to me any more,’ Elise replied, mumbling into the top of Connie’s arm. ‘The things you said at the beginning.’
‘What things?’
‘That you needed me. That I’m special.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Connie said, holding her tightly and kissing the top of her head. ‘I do need you. You are special.’
*
The storm between them blew out of the garden without breaking over their heads. Elise felt both vindicated, and chastened. Connie was neglectful at times, it was true, and Elise didn’t want to be pitied like Shara. Nevertheless, she still felt that the expression of any autonomy, of self-confidence or demand, would make her position precarious. When she expressed what she wanted – Connie’s attention, which really meant Connie’s respect and love – she sounded childish, and felt as if she was being indulged. Elise stared at the water. She did not want to be a mermaid any more. She wanted to feel part of the earth.
*
Connie took her to a day of filming. Inside the hangar, Barbara strode towards them in a billowing kimono, a cotton bonnet tied tightly over her head. Elise’s heart sank. Only weeks before, she’d been so excited to meet Barbara, but now it was as if the woman approached her and she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. She was too much. Barbara was wearing no make-up, but her skin was perfect, giving her the appearance of a luminescent boiled egg. Her breasts had been spectacularly trussed together in a corset. ‘I know,’ said Barbara, pointing to them. ‘I should wear this get-up every day. But any higher and I’d have problems getting cutlery in my mouth.’
Through the open doors, Elise saw a crocodile of lumpen extras being walked along the side of the road, all of them in Hollywood’s peasant palette; dun, a little cranberry, shifting shades of dirty cream. ‘Who are they?’ she asked.
‘They’re making a film about the founding fathers,’ Barbara snorted as Connie craned her head to watch them go. ‘Welcome to the New World. Come and wait in my dressing room, ladies. I’ve got ages before my scene.’
Out in the July sunshine, Barbara hoicked herself up onto a waiting golf buggy, and Elise and Connie sat on either side of her. Her kimono was so enormous that it crept over Connie’s and Elise’s laps, mushrooming over the sides of the vehicle. The hem shimmered under the sun like the edge of a gigantic manta ray. Barbara reached down into the line between her breasts, accidentally elbowing Elise in the ribs as she pulled out a cigarette and a lighter, jamming the cigarette in her mouth like a cowboy, a clash with her Calvinist hair-protector.
‘My emergency smoke,’ said Barbara. ‘Do you feel it, Elise?’
‘Feel what?’
Barbara dragged on her cigarette and blew out a grey plume. ‘The beginning. I love beginnings.’
‘So do I,’ said Connie.
Barbara prodded Connie’s forearm. ‘It’s the middle and the end that are the fuckers.’
Connie laughed, squinting up at the cerulean sky. ‘Maybe just the middle.’
Barbara shaded her eyes as they trundled along. ‘I’m exhausted.’
‘Don’t you want to be alone to prepare yourself?’ asked Elise.
Barbara sniffed. ‘No, no.’ She paused. ‘My ex-husband is being a total bastard,’ she said, out of nowhere. Her voice was raw, her hands quivered in her lap before she stilled them. She looked at Connie. ‘He came round again at one a.m., Con.’
‘Oh, god. I’m sorry,’ said Connie.
Con. Con and Barb. Barbara seemed so at ease spilling herself out to Connie – or maybe it was just because Barbara was so used to reading about herself, seeing herself outside of the immediate, intimate circle of her life – outside of herself, in fact – that she did not think talking so openly in this way would ever harm her. Elise thought Barbara’s life experiences under public exposure would have sealed her mouth by now, but perhaps you forgot how to live any other way.
‘He wants money,’ said Barbara. ‘He knows I’m doing this film so that’s when he comes truffling.’
‘Did you give him any?’ asked Elise, trying to keep inside the flow of conversation.
Barbara swivelled to face Elise. ‘Never get married, honey. If that’s the one piece of advice I’ve got for you, that’s it.’
‘Why would I get married?’ Elise said.
Barbara did not reply. Elise reflected that Barbara, with her four ex-husbands, had never seemed to heed that particular nugget of advice herself. Barbara and Connie talked on and on, and Elise tuned out, her eyes closed in the sun.
Privately, she considered the idea of marriage – in which you became one joined person, one new person – to be utterly irresistible. To think: you could annihilate yourself like that, and everyone approved! It was so hard to continually be a person. Imagine finding a better self of thoughtfulness and kindness, your own heart transformed in the night, just by lying next to theirs! Imagine letting them take the lead in a way that still felt as if you were shoulder to shoulder! That it could be so easy!
With Connie these days, it was not that easy.
Elise thought as the buggy still trundled: I could get a plane to New York City. She’d never been, but she did not need to ask Connie about New York City as she had enquired about LA – because everyone knew what New York was: yellow taxis, Greenwich Village, bagels and Tiffany’s. The blue of Hockney’s swimming pool dissolved into a vision of the russet leaves of Central Park. Elise thought of The Great Gatsby, and the song ‘I’d be rich as Rockefeller!’ and pizza cooked by immigrants from Naples, like Bill Gazzara’s father. She willed herself there like Dorothy, but when she opened her eyes again, the three of them were on the golf buggy, still trundling the lots.
*
Barbara’s dressing room was surprisingly spare in terms of furniture; a long shelf attached to the wall, surrounded by a huge mirror lined with many little glowing lightbulbs, a low-slung red velvet sofa, an incongruous wooden farmhouse chair, and a clothes rail, upon which hung the outfits for Beatrice Jones. On the shelf Elise saw make-up brushes, pots and potions, a heavily folded and pencilled script, a bottle of water, one of vodka, three used glasses and a smattering of good-luck cards. Next to these, a huge bouquet of lilies, a fruit basket and an overflowing ashtray. A small fridge hummed in the corner.
Barbara delicately scrunched the cellophane of the fruit basket with her forefinger and thumb. ‘You girls want an apple?’
They both declined.
‘They always send me fruit but the acid’s such a bitch. A beer, then? Take a seat.’
Connie and Elise sat on the sofa. It was deceptively uncomfortable. This all felt strange. Again, Elise didn’t think it was normal for a star of Barbara’s status to invite them into her inner sanctuary. Surely such a person should be guarded and dismissive? Why was this happening? Barbara rustled to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. She opened them with a sharp blow and handed them over. Bewildered, Elise took hers and sipped. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Connie was already drinking hers.