Page 92 of Born for Starlight

"When's she getting here?" Julian asked, for the tenth time, checking a cheap digital watch. "She's going to look for me. First thing. You’ll see."

A little after five o'clock, a black sedan turned in at the front gate.

The pool surged toward the rope. Cameras came up in a solid rank. Costa smoothed his jacket and grew two inches. And I stopped breathing for a second, dread and relief landing in the same beat.

The car stopped. Vargas got out first and opened the door. Pinto came around the far side. And then a low heel found the gravel, and a woman rose up out of that sedan into a hundred cameras, as if she were born for it.

Pale pink dress. Subtle jewelry. Every hair where I'd watched her put it. She lifted her chin and gave the lenses a smile that reached clean to the back row. Warm, easy, total. Not one soul in that crowd could have told you it was a performance.

I could. I knew every muscle in it.

She was ten steps from me and a hundred miles out of reach. Wired to no one. Walking into the dirtiest building in the state with an oversized check and a smile, and there was not one word I could say to her.

"Showtime." Simon's voice was quiet in my ear.

Julian pushed to the front of the rope and waved both arms over his head.

"Angelica! Angelica, over here! It's me!"

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The door opened and the cameras came up like a wave, and I stepped into them the way I'd done a thousand times.

Chin up. Smile. Let them have the smile first, before the eyes. The smile sold. The eyes told the truth. Nobody in that crowd was getting my eyes today.

Costa came down the steps with both hands out, his cologne a full second ahead of him. I took both his hands, because taking both hands kept a man from kissing you. Then I turned him a quarter step so the light fell on my good side. He never felt it happen. Men like Costa never did—they always assumed they were in charge.

"Senhorita. Welcome. Welcome to Aurora."

"Senhor Costa, it's wonderful. You've built something beautiful here." I said it straight down a lens, because that's where the sentence would live forever. Then, softer, just for him, "Thank you for making room for me today."

I could see his head swelling like rising dough in a hot kitchen.

Then, past the rope, I saw him, a man with both arms in the air.

"Angelica! Over here! It's me!"

Oh, for the love of God, Julian.

Of course, it was Julian. I'd done two long interviews with the man, and I'd learned everything about him in the first five minutes of the first one. Then he turned out to be like gum on the bottom of your shoe. Not evil. Not even smart. Just impossible to scrape off, and convinced, all the way down to his bones, that you were glad he was there. Every actress alive had three of him somewhere.

I smiled. I waved. Then I gave him the thing that shut every Julian up for exactly ninety seconds—one direct look, his name, a hand lifted toward him with the palm out. "Julian, hold that thought, I want to hear it." It meant nothing. It sounded like a promise. He beamed like I'd handed him a kidney, and I was past him before the beam faded.

Behind Julian, forty feet back and not looking at me, stood Matthew. I could feel his presence. I’d know him if we were in the middle of a blackout.

He had his hands behind his back and his professional face on, the flat one that gave nothing to anybody. I'd have paid real money to know what was going on behind it. I couldn't ask. I couldn't so much as nod. So, I let my eyes pass over him like he was just another reporter. But something in my chest turned over anyway. I put it away.

Then I noticed the rope.

The press pool stood behind it. Every camera, every reporter, every sound man with a boom, held back where Costa's people wanted them. But Julian wasn't behind it. Julian stood on my side of it, in the open, working his way toward me with a staffer at his elbow.

How on earth had he managed that?

Costa ushered me up the stairs. I stopped and turned again for another wave. I didn’t answer any questions, this wasn’t the time, instead I turned again toward the open doors that led to a wide front hall.

The smell hit me.

Disinfectant.