Stevie tried not to let it get to her. Ben was always demanding to trail her around and get introduced to as many influential faces as possible, but then did little to establish or nurture those relationships. She found it awkward: it wasn’t that she didn’t
want
Ben accompanying her to parties, exactly, more that she felt it a liberty to constantly be appearing to pioneer an out-of-work actor in need of a break. Nevertheless, she kept reminding herself, this was a favour to Bibi. Wasn’t she riding on one humongous favour herself?
She and Ben shared a car to the Posen mansion. Ben had harped on about accompanying her in for the benefit of the paps but she had refused, saying speculation would be rife once it was revealed he was Linus’s sort-of-brother-in-law (which she suspected was exactly what he wanted). Now, predictably, he was sulking. Stevie glanced at him on the back seat. The only physical similarity he had with Bibi was the hair, which was curly and gingerish. He was getting chubby around the chin and was struggling to cultivate a beard. She’d seen pictures of Ben when he was young and he’d been cute then, but cuteness often didn’t translate into adulthood.
The paparazzi were out in force. Ben was first to enter
the fray and attracted a minor flurry when the association with Linus’s new girlfriend was revealed. He hovered about a bit once the cameras had done their thing then loped off in search of a drink.
Stevie’s reception was at the other end of the scale. Clad in a white Stella McCartney number (she was always advised to wear British) cut short at the thigh, she emerged to a cacophony of exclamations and demands for her attention. Bulbs glittered in an almost continuous stream of light. The glasses were long gone and the hair was let loose, tumbling in gentle deep-red waves to her shoulders. She possessed a Mona Lisa smile that sent the paps wild.
Inside, Bibi found her straight away. ‘I’m so happy to see you, Steve, I’ve missed you
sooo
much! Can you believe the reception you got? I suppose you’re used to it by now, but wow! You look amazing, by the way. Do I look OK? I wasn’t sure about the dress but it
is
my party, you know, so I figured I should stand out.’
Stevie liked Bibi’s dress but the rest of her looked bad. Her green eyes were glassy and there were dark rings beneath them that she had tried to conceal with foundation. Her hair, that reddish frizz once so charmingly shambolic, was bluntly cut and dyed a severe, waxy blonde. There were still shades of the old Bibi, but it was as if a light, a vital one, had gone out. ‘It’s gorgeous, B,’ said Stevie, kissing her friend on the cheek. She fought the urge to wrap a blanket round her and bundle her home where she could take care of her. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in a week. ‘I haven’t seen Linus. Where is he?’
‘Oh—’ Bibi flapped her hands ‘—he’s about. Is Ben here? How’s it going?’
Stevie turned round. Ben was making small talk with a
nonplussed Scottish-born actor and drinking too quickly. She was about to say something evasive like,
You know what teenagers are like
, then realised that made her sound about fifty.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘He’s settling in.’
The Posen mansion was outlandishly decorated. Crystal chandeliers dazzled from lofty ceilings; plaid chaises longues studded the marble floor of the entrance hall accompanied by faux-Regency three-legged tables; huge gilt mirrors hung on the walls. Artwork from Linus’s greatest movies was dotted around: action-shot stills of gorgeous actresses, all running from some point of menace. It was elegant, if you liked that sort of thing, but strangely void of character.
‘There he is!’ Bibi had spotted her aged, overweight boyfriend as he weaved through the crowd of assembled faces, flinty eyes scanning the guests. Stevie hadn’t seen Linus since they’d been introduced in New York, and she was reminded of how physically off-putting she found him. He’d got fatter in the intervening months, and his white hair was now cut brutally short, military-style, which emphasised the pink fleshiness of his cheeks.
‘Stevie Speller,’ he greeted her with a damp kiss, ‘I always knew you’d be going places. Didn’t I say so when we first met?’
She couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said but it hadn’t been that. In a flash she recalled the card he’d handed her, a matching one to Bibi’s.
‘Make an old man happy,’ he said, licking his lips as his eyes scoped her body, ‘and promise you’ll work with me some day …’
Ben joined them. Bibi’s haunted expression was immediately replaced by a happier one.
‘Little bro!’ She had to reach up to hug him, she was so tiny. ‘How’s it living with my best friend?’
‘’S OK.’ He shrugged.
Unfortunately Linus took the opportunity to step closer to Stevie.
‘I mean it,’ he said quietly. ‘Dirk tells me you’re the business. The offer’s there whenever you want it.’
She hadn’t a clue what he was doing speaking to Dirk Michaels about her. It stood to reason they’d compare notes, but the way Linus was going on was unsettling, as if they’d been discussing her behind her back.
‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ she replied, though she had no intention of doing so. Linus returned by placing a heavy hand on the small of her back and instantly she moved away.
‘Can you believe we’re all here?’ Bibi was exclaiming, though her wholehearted enthusiasm was matched only by Ben’s lack of interest and Stevie’s unease, as the print from Linus’s touch seared into her.
Linus looked momentarily thrown, as though he’d forgotten all about his girlfriend. He glanced down at Bibi, as if she were a pet.
‘Run along, darling, our guests need seeing to.’
An uncomfortable silence ensued. Stevie was shocked at the director’s rudeness, and even more shocked by her friend’s response. The old Bibi would never have cowed to such misplaced authority. This one nodded meekly and moved away.
Bibi Reiner went straight upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms—she had taken to sleeping there recently. She
couldn’t stand it. Her head was spinning and she had a dry, sick taste in her mouth. Shakily, she fished about in a drawer and found what she was looking for. She unscrewed the cap and poured the dark liquid down her throat.
Before she’d met Linus Posen she had never drunk. These days, forget it.
Damn Linus.
Damn him!
Bibi oscillated between needing him desperately—alone, panicking,
What am I without him
?—and loathing the man with every fibre of her being. He had promised her the world: the moon, the stars and everything in between. Instead he had fed her into a different, sordid game. One she felt powerless to get out of.
Linus Posen ran a lucrative sideline in the porn industry. By day he directed surefire Hollywood blockbusters; by night he directed movies called things like
The Girl Who Couldn’t Say No
and
Six in a Bed
. He’d been doing it for years. Oh, it wasn’t the money—he’d made his fortune long ago—but he liked it. It gave him a kick. His favourite hobby.
Bibi closed her eyes, surrendered to a shudder. The things he had made her do … with men, with women, with objects—ever since she had foolishly taken his card. Stevie had told her not to call, but had she listened? No. She’d met Linus the following week, dazzled by his guarantees of fame and celebrity, willing to do anything he asked. Initially he’d been pissed that she’d come alone, he’d wanted the girls as a package: Bibi with her wild hair and huge innocent eyes and Stevie with her cool, slender beauty. She’d been forced to give him head as ‘compensation’. Even if she had wanted to confide in her friend, she couldn’t: she hadn’t been able to talk right for days afterwards.
That episode had set the tone for their working
relationship—and now it was degradation of the highest, or lowest, order. Before Bibi realised what was happening, Linus had drawn her in, dangling the carrot of stardom and having her follow it blindly into a long dark tunnel. By the time she wanted out, it was too late: she turned, looked back the way she had come, searching, searching, and could no longer see the light.
Some days, the good days, she believed she was on a necessary journey. Linus promised her she was a natural and that the camera loved her: she was born to do this. Bibi would beg—when could she star in just one of his other movies? And he kept making that vow, just this last gig, just this last time, and then he’d get her the breakthrough audition…
It never came. Meanwhile just about everything and everyone else did, in her mouth, in her hair, on her body, between her legs. She’d thought when she became Linus’s official girlfriend, the way out would be clear: he wouldn’t want to risk people seeing her in that context, would he? It had to stop. But Linus had a solution for everything. Instead he capitalised on it, engineering movies more sordid and perverse than ever, introducing her to the underground scene as ‘The Faceless Vixen’, forcing her body into every unthinkable position but always severing the headshot. It was a double strike for the Posen empire: a host of new devotees who got off on the anonymity; and for him, supreme protection.
Somehow the very worst thing was sleeping with Linus himself. He was away a lot of the time, Bibi could only guess at where or with whom, but each night he returned it always went the same way. He’d be drunk, and he always sweated when he drank. Bibi, anticipating his
arrival, would get stoned out of her head. It was how she got through sex on-set—that and more coke than she knew what to do with. For Linus’s pleasure she would be required to get changed into something school-girlish; they’d engage in the first part of a role play that involved her getting on all fours and having her ass spanked while he whacked off, then he’d be so drunk he dived straight in, rutting her from behind with a half-limp dick. She supposed it was some small mercy (and it was small) not to be forced to face him, but as she accommodated his heaving bulk, suit pants round his ankles, shoes still on, grunting and wheezing as he ploughed into her for ages and ages, making her dry, making her sore, she wondered when the hell it had gone so wrong.
She had wanted to be an actress—a proper, serious actress. Now she was little more than a high-paid whore. Because in return for the work she did for Linus, she got a roof over her head, her status as his girlfriend, everything she thought she had wanted. She just hadn’t known at what price. Walking out now would mean the months had been in vain, and there was still a chance her time would come. Wasn’t there? How much longer could she stand it?
A tear plopped down her cheek. It wouldn’t do to cry. She had a party to get on with and guests to greet. The Bibi Reiner show must go on.
Before she went downstairs, she cut two fat lines and inhaled them in quick succession, so hard it made her teeth hurt. There, that was better.
Stevie was talking to Dirk Michaels, head of Searchbeam Studios and, she was learning, close friend of Linus. He was good-looking in a predatory, self-satisfied way, with
black, deep-set eyes and a mop of dyed mahogany hair. He’d also been giving her serious come-on chat.
‘How’s your daughter?’ she enquired, deciding to remind him of his family. His only child, Farrah, was constantly in the press with her crew of fellow teenage starlets.
‘Keeping out of trouble,’ he leered, ‘for now.’ Stevie, accurately sensing he was about to deliver an awful line about making trouble themselves, cut in.
‘That must be a relief.’
Dirk sighed, replenished both their drinks when a waiter swept past. ‘Her best friend was the troublemaker. Now Tom Nash has finally seen sense and deported her, we can all rest easy.’
Stevie puzzled over the connections. ‘Aurora Nash has been
deported
?’
Ben joined them, no doubt wanting her to put a word in.
‘Sent her to school in the UK,’ elaborated Dirk, barely registering Ben’s presence. ‘You must have read it. She kicked off such a fuss mid-air that their jet had to be brought down.’
‘Oh, right.’ That would explain why she hadn’t seen Aurora on the newsstands recently. The girl intrigued Stevie. She carried an air of greater intelligence than the party she hung with.
Ben’s voice snapped her back to reality. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’ He was like a panting dog begging for scraps. Stevie obliged. As the men shook hands a tinkling of glasses hushed the crowd, accompanied by a ripple of urgent shushes.
Linus Posen had taken to the main staircase, where he jovially raised his drink.
‘Listen up, everybody.’ He was slurring his words. The
gathering dutifully turned. ‘Tonight marks my permanent relocation to Los Angeles—a move I’ve been planning for some time. But I’m also taking this opportunity to ask a special question to a special woman in my life.’ He scanned the assembly, veined face flaccid with drink. ‘Where’s my girl?’
Stevie watched as Bibi made her way forward, smile fixed in place, shaking a little on her heels. Linus helped her up next to him, his massive frame dwarfing her miniature one.
‘Baby—’ he directed it to the crowd, Stevie noticed, rather than to Bibi ‘—we’ve been together a little while now. I think we’ve got a good thing going—’ a self-deprecating shrug ‘—an’ this old dog’s not getting any younger.’ There was a polite murmur of disagreement from the crowd, which he lazily waved away. ‘So, whaddaya say? How’d you like to be my wife, B? How’d you like to be Mrs Linus Posen?’
A cheer went up.
Bibi found Stevie’s eyes. Stevie thought she detected a quiet panic there—and shock, definitely. Celebratory cheers and backslaps were being passed round. Linus held his wife-to-be’s hand in the air as if they were champions in a great race.
Bibi blinked, before seeming to recover herself.
‘But she hasn’t said yes,’ murmured Stevie.
Next to her, Ben yawned. ‘Of course she’s going to say yes,’ he said. ‘It’s B.’
21
Lori
Corazón had loaned her enough money to get settled in a place of her own. Initially she hadn’t wanted to take it, but, after it was agreed she would repay every cent, objection seemed mulish. And so it was that Lori returned to America with a heart full of promise.