Read Hollywood Girls Club for Free Online Page A

film was only a week away (assuming Zymar returned from overseas and Bradford completed rehab). Lydia wanted Mary Anne on set every day. She needed her there for production writing. That was another seventy-five thousand a week to add to Mary Anne’s flourishing bank account.
    Mary Anne padded down the hall past the guest room (she had a guest room!). She glanced in the mirror hanging in the hall.
    Her green eyes looked tired. Her light brown hair, earlier pulled into a ponytail, now stuck out at odd angles (she had a habit of pulling on her hair while she wrote). Dark under-eye circles were evident even through her freckles. “You look like the girl next door!” Celeste Solange had exclaimed yesterday, the first time they met, flashing her effervescent world-famous smile.
    Mary Anne had been starstruck; it was the first time she truly understood the word. How did you speak to someone you’d watched on a twenty-foot screen since you were twelve years old? This woman had won a Golden Globe! What could she , Mary Anne Meyers from Minnesota, possibly have to say that could interest Celeste Solange?
    “Just be yourself,” Lydia had whispered into Mary Anne’s ear prior to Celeste walking into the room. “She’s a person. Think of her like you would your neighbor or a cousin. Don’t treat her differently; they get tired of that.”
    Some cousin!
    But Mary Anne tried to act normal—tried not to be speechless, flounder her words, gush, stare, beam … all those things Hollywood newbies and tourists were guilty of doing. She tried to call Celeste Cici, as the star had insisted. She also tried to focus on the person Celeste was, not the persona she presented.
    Mary Anne guessed that there was a piece of herself that Celeste held back—a piece that wasn’t for public consumption. When everyone wanted a piece of you, didn’t you have to retain something for yourself?
    Mary Anne walked into her bedroom. Painted lavender, the room was calming. Her giant king-sized bed, draped in a paisley-flowered duvet, called to her. Mary Anne sat on her bed and slid off her fuzzy bunny slippers. She placed them next to the three-foot pile of scripts that Jessica had messengered to the house. Each screenplay sent from a producer clamoring for Mary Anne to rewrite his or her script.
    “Lydia must have a lot of faith in you,” Jessica had said. “First-time writers never do production work. I know Lydia thinks you’re talented.”
    Mary Anne lay back onto her bed and tried to soften her mind for sleep; all she needed was a couple hours, but her mind wouldn’t stop spinning. Once you worked for Lydia Albright, you could work for any studio in town.
    It was difficult for Mary Anne to wrap her mind around her success—she spent almost a decade trying to break into the film business, thinking that nobody wanted her and that she wasn’t very talented. Now, with just one phone call, just one person believing in her the whole town was banging on her door. Where had they been the past nine years?
    “Basically, it’s an industry full of lemmings,” Jessica said. “Point them to the sea and they’ll go. Even if there’s a big cliff.”
    Mary Anne shut her eyes. Enjoy it , she thought, drifting off to sleep. At least you’re not a rodent.

 
    Chapter 5
    Chanel Sandals by the Pool
     
    “A divorce?! Celeste, you do not want a divorce,” Damien said.
    Celeste lay on a chaise lounge next to their Olympic-size swimming pool, sipping fresh-squeezed guava-mint-orange juice and while she attempted to maintain her calm cool façade anger seethed within her clamping hard in her belly. A knife—she wanted a long, sharp and jagged blade if not to kill her husband then to make him suffer—or at least scare the son of a bitch.
    Damien dried the droplets of water off his silver-haired torso. She’d watched him complete fifty laps (his morning ritual for twenty years) and wondered at each turn how she might successfully drown her philandering