Glitter Baby Read Online Free PDF Page A

either onthe Zaca or alongside the pool. They marked their nights in clubs and restaurants. She learned to smoke and drink, she learned not to stare when she met famous people, no matter how excited she felt inside, and she learned that famous people seemed to like her. An actor who was a friend of Flynn’s told her it was because she offered no judgment, only adoration. The remark puzzled her. How could she judge? It wasn’t up to ordinary people to pass judgment on the stars.
    Sometimes at night she and Flynn made love, but more often they talked. It hurt her to see how sad and troubled he was beneath his devil-may-care facade. She devoted herself to making him happy.
    She saw Rebel Without a Cause and thought that maybe her dream hadn’t died after all. She was meeting studio executives now instead of lowly assistant casting directors. She needed to take advantage of those contacts and prepare for the inevitable time when Flynn moved on to another woman. She had no delusions about that. She wasn’t important enough to hold him for long.
    Flynn bought her a daring lipstick-red French bikini and sat by the side of the pool sipping his vodka while he watched her play. No one else at the Garden was adventurous enough to wear one of the new bikinis, but Belinda didn’t feel embarrassed. She loved watching Flynn watch her. She loved emerging from the water to be wrapped in the towel he held for her. She felt sheltered, protected, and adored.
    Late one morning while Flynn was still sleeping, Belinda donned the red bikini and dived into the deserted pool. She swam several easy laps, opening her eyes under water to look at the initials of Alla Nazimova carved into the concrete just below the water line. When she came to the surface, she found herself staring at a pair of highly polished leather shoes.
    “ Tiens! A mermaid has taken over the pool at the Garden of Allah. A mermaid with eyes bluer than the sky.”
    Treading water, Belinda squinted against the morning sun to see the man standing over her. He was distinctly European. His oyster-white suit had the sheen of silk and the immaculate press of a man who kept a valet. He was of medium height, slim and aristocratic, with dark hair that had been skillfully cut to disguise its thinning. Small, slanted eyes sat above a broad nose with a slight hook at the end. He wasn’t handsome, but he was imposing. The smell of money and power clung to him as tenaciously as his expensive cologne. She judged him to be in his mid-to-late thirties, French by his accent, although his features were more exotic. Maybe he was a European filmmaker.
    She gave him a saucy grin. “No mermaid, monsieur. Just a very ordinary girl.”
    “ Ordinaire? I would hardly say so. Três extraordinaire , in fact.”
    She accepted his compliment graciously, and in her best accented high school French replied, “ Merci beaucoup, monsieur. Vous êtes trop gentil .”
    “Tell me, ma petite mermaid. Is there a tail beneath that charmant red bikini?”
    Amusement glinted in his eyes, but Belinda sensed something calculated about his audaciousness. This man did nothing, said nothing, by accident. “ Mais non, monsieur ,” she replied evenly. “Only two ordinary legs.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps, mademoiselle, you will let me be the judge?”
    She gazed at him for a moment, then dived under and swam in long, clean strokes for the ladder at the opposite end of the pool. But when she climbed out, he’d disappeared. Half an hour later, she walked into the bungalow and found him talking to Flynn over Bloody Marys.
    Mornings weren’t Flynn’s best time, and next to the immaculately groomed stranger he looked rumpled and old. Still, he was by far the more handsome. She sat on the arm of his chair and placed her hand on his shoulder. She wished she had the courage to plant a casual good-morning kiss on his cheek, but the sporadic nighttime intimacies that passed between them didn’t make her feel entitled