My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan Page B

CLEAR I cannot deal with this project today! Something’s come up, something very
     upsetting, and I need to discuss it with you!”
    “Right this minute?”
    “YES!” she barked and, glowering at Gina, added,
“Alone!”
    She turned, stormed off down a short hallway, and, extending her arm like a battering ram, disappeared through a swinging
     door.
    “Sorry, hon,” said Stephen to the woman who could never love him as I could. “You don’t want to be around her when she’s this
     way.”
    “She’s always this way,” noted Gina. She spun around and, in a pale imitation of Diana’s imperious exit, flounced petulantly
     into the living room. He watched her go, then favored us with a beleaguered smile.
    “Sorry, guys,” he said. “We’re not always this crazy.”
    “Just one of those days,” I said.
    He turned and disappeared down the short hall. I was sorry to see him go though delighted to watch him go, the view from behind
     being a honey and one I could ogle freely without him noticing. After he’d gone we stood a moment in dreamy silence, mired
     in that trancelike zone where worship and lust collide.
    “He’s gorgeous!” whispered Gilbert.
    “Stunning.”
    “In shorts yet!”
    “We sure won that lottery.”
    “We have
got
to get this job, Philly!”
    “I know!” I concurred from the depths of my soul. “If it weren’t for Diana—”
    “Yikes, what a bitch!”
    “I’ll say!”
    “And looking pretty rough too.”
    “Tell me. That face has more fine lines than
The Importance of Being Earnest.
”
    We agreed that our one slim hope of victory would be if Diana, having unburdened her woes to Stephen, retired to her fainting
     couch. Then Stephen, finding us still waiting, would surely consent to hear us out. In the meanwhile we’d suck up to Gina,
     who might, despite Diana’s clear disdain for her, prove a useful ally.
    We sidled discreetly into the living room, a vast high-ceilinged chamber that seemed designed to make you kick yourself for
     having left your powdered wig at home. Gina, looking incongruous in her running togs, sat sulking on a richly brocaded gold
     sofa. I feared she’d resent the intrusion but she seemed, if anything, to have been waiting for us.
    “She loves to do this to me,” she declared with a wounded frown.
    “Diana?”
    “Constantly! She loves to make me feel I’m not part of the family, like I’m some... interloper! I’ve reached out to her
so
many times but nothing I do is ever good enough.”
    At first we felt surprised, even flattered that a glamorous film star (albeit one whose acting we abhorred and whose husband
     we longed to purloin) had taken us so swiftly into her confidence. We did not yet realize that her openness owed less to our
     empathic faces than her impulse to talk about herself during all hours not given over to sleep. When there was no suitable
     friend or relation on hand to listen, then a screenwriter would suffice, as would a stylist, driver, or elevator occupant.
     To be Gina’s confidant you did not need to be her peer. You just had to be in earshot.
    “This so-called crisis,” she continued, “I’ll bet it’s nothing. She’s just making it sound important for the fun of shutting
     me out.”
    “Actually,” I said, “she did seem pretty upset when we got here.”
    “Yes,” said Gilbert. “She told us something really bad had come up.”
    “See!” she cried in bitter triumph. “She tells
you
about it and she doesn’t even
know
you. But I have to hear it from strangers!”
    We assured her that Diana had confided no details of the crisis to us except that it involved her sister. Then Gilbert, spotting
     the houseman trembling in the foyer, suggested that he might know the scoop, having been tantrum-adjacent all morning.
    “What a good idea! Phelps knows everything that happens around here!”
    She raced off to intercept him, and when she returned it was clear from her malicious smirk that the shakedown had