a barely there white tennis dress and posed with her hand on her hip, as if she were emulating an older, more experienced woman she had seen strike the same pose. She was all legs, and her breasts seemed too big for her, as if they were things that needed to be grown into. Her hair was pinned up in a beehive—an odd hairstyle for tennis—and her charcoal-lined eyes teased the camera.
My gut told me that the photo meant something, something more than the rest of my research combined. I looked at it again, focusing on that mysterious man in the background. Lily had never married—unusual for a woman of her social standing—and judging by the photos and news clippings there hadn’t been a significant other throughout the years. It was possible this guy was a lover. If so, that begged the further question of what had happened.
There was something about the photo that seared through me.
I couldn’t figure it out. I printed the photo, and I pressed it between the pages of my notebook like a rose from a long-lost love. A reminder of something important—something not to be forgotten.
* * *
Ironically, it was in this period of distractedness that my star was finally rising at the Times. I learned quickly that once Los Angeles decides to sprinkle you with its stardust, it shakes so generously you glitter.
I say this because after those first few stories my sky twinkled brightly. There was the story on Joel, followed by the David Duplaine shake-up, the Millstone coverage and then the interview with the governor. I would never know how I had won Phil Rubenstein’s favor after what had happened at the Journal, but what I came to understand was that Los Angeles, above anything else, was a city of forgiveness and second chances.
Scarcely three weeks after my first meeting with Lily Goldman, life moved from slow motion to the speed at which a race-car driver accelerates at the drop of the green flag. The invitations poured in—not to the second-rate parties that had always been my lot, but to first-rate premieres and galas. I attended a few, met new people and was invited to more. Studio publicists lunched me and Rubenstein slipped me the choicest articles.
I was working at the paper early one morning—no later than 7:00 a.m.—when my phone rang from a private number. It was Lily.
I barely had a chance to say hello.
“Thomas, darling, I only have a moment, but I’m calling to insist you join me this evening at Carole’s. She and Charles are having a small dinner, and I haven’t seen you in months.”
This was a slight exaggeration. “I’d love to come,” I said stoically, for I believed that emotion was a badge of weakness in this group. “Please extend a thank-you to Carole. Is there something she’d like me to bring?”
“Absolutely not. The last I heard you are not a member of Carole’s staff,” Lily said. “Kurt will pick you up at six thirty.”
* * *
As promised, Kurt picked me up at six thirty. This time we fetched Lily on our way to our destination, and after Lily’s house we drove a few blocks before reaching a pair of stone columns, each crowned with a vintage gas lamp. A tall wooden gate stared at us, and a personal security car waited beside one of the columns.
Lily waved in the general direction of the security guard in a familiar manner and the gates opened.
We wound our way up a steep driveway that must have been a quarter of a mile long. Once we arrived we were rewarded with an incredible view of Los Angeles. It was a view that shouldn’t have been available for private purchase. Below us, sprinklers watered the fairways of the Bel-Air Country Club with perfectly arched trajectories, and uniformly dressed groundskeepers raked the country club’s sand traps. Beyond, Los Angeles was just beginning to wake up and glitter for the night as the sun was setting over a sliver of ocean that sparkled like a mirror.
I wished I could bottle that view. I looked over to Lily. She seemed indifferent to the blanket of lights that lay before us. She straightened out my new shirt and pants.
“The city feels so small from up here,” I said.
“It’s trickery,” Lily said. “It makes us feel like we’re the powerful ones, even though nothing could be further from the truth.”
I glanced at her incredulously.
“It’s true. We’re all just renters, Thomas. Someday our leases will be up. Carole’s, mine, yours... Look, my father’s just ended. An eighty-one-year lease on life—that was all he got.”
The city buzzed dully in the distance. Lily squinted at an imaginary point, and I wondered what she was thinking about. It was strange; her father had passed away around a month ago, but Lily hadn’t seemed deeply affected by it. I wondered if it was a veneer as fastidiously crafted as her shop and her house.
I turned around to give Lily a moment, and for the first time I noticed the house. The white brick mansion was perched adjacent to the egg-shaped cobblestone motor court. It was a wedding cake of a house—with a second story slightly smaller than the first, and a few curlicue frills for decoration. It was a grander, whiter, more sprawling version of the traditional house surrounded by the picket fence that suburban girls dream of. I imagined it was built in the late 1930s or early ’40s, post-Depression for a manufacturing or real estate tycoon. The mansion appeared purposely situated to get the maximum vistas, but it was plotted in such a way that you might almost miss it when you drove up—the real estate equivalent of Lily Goldman’s false modesty.
There was no need for doorbells at houses like these. Instead, a butler in a black coat and white gloves held the door open for us and led us into the foyer. He greeted Lily by name and Lily introduced me as “Thomas Cleary, the finest reporter in Los Angeles.”
A large antique iron birdcage hung from the entry’s ceiling in lieu of a chandelier. It had a whimsical effect, as if the house’s owners were trying not to take themselves too seriously. A sweeping stairway made for brides or goodbyes crawled up the wall, and sconces cast a soft glow over us.
The butler escorted us toward the stairway, under which a secret door led us into a formal dining room wrapped in hand-painted wallpaper depicting an ancient Asian landscape complete with geishas, canoes, swans, hummingbirds, pergolas and flowers. The Asian chandelier overhead seemed plucked from the wallpaper into real life.
The group was sipping before-dinner cocktails. I decided that there must have been a tribal theme to the evening: Emma wore a feathered headdress, Carole donned heavy silver-and-turquoise jewelry that contrasted with her red-apple lips, and the menus that rested on our plates indicated we were to be served buffalo as our main course.
Charles approached us eagerly. He kissed Lily’s cheek and shook my hand.
“Thomas, thank you so much for joining us. I’ve been reading your bylines. You sure have a knack for the written word.”
“Thank you,” I said, because Charles was the type of man who would say something like that and genuinely mean it. “How’s the screenplay coming?”
“Fantastic, chap.” Charles swept David into conversation with his right arm. “David, you remember Thomas?” He always seemed to veer the subject away from himself, as if he wasn’t worthy of discussion.
“Of course.” David’s expression was even. “We missed you at the governor’s party, but I trust your reason for absence was a good-looking one.”
My
