Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls Read Online Free PDF Page A

hadn’t seen them in a couple of weeks. It was hard to keep track of fourteen-year-olds. They rarely called her when they were staying with Ted. Judd spent most of his free time closed up in his room, playing on his computer. Bud (who recently insisted that everyone call him “Dylan”) was usually off at clubs with his friends from high school.
    Dave Feld was closer than that. He was seated next to her at dinner. Neely did a quick clockwise sweep of the table, starting with herself. Neely, Dave Feld, the hostess, one of the high-profile candidates, an actress with a current box-office hit, a big-name criminal lawyer, the wife of a studio chief, an actor who’d been active in the Democratic Party for years, a television producer, someone from some big consulting firm in Washington.
    The second-best table. Pretty good for a crowd this big, but still. It made Neely crazy that you weren’t supposed to ask where you’d be seated before you attended these things. It was unbelievable to her that someone could ask a big star like Neely O’Hara to show up and to write a check, and there was never any guarantee where she’d be seated. It seemed like something an agent would be able to negotiate, but Gordon had explained (first slowly, then with a bit of impatience in his voice) that when people entertained in private homes, questions about the seating chart were considered bad form.
    Dave Feld had all the right credentials. He owned a big piece of a production company that currently had four prime-time hits on two different networks. He had grown up in Washington and moved to Los Angeles right after graduating from NYU. He had gotten divorced six months ago, just before his fiftieth birthday.
    “I love your tie,” Neely said. She swept her eyes down the length of his tie and slowly brought them back up, lingering on his mouth. He drove her home, and they made out in the front seat, just like teenagers. Neely knew better than to invite him in. Recently divorced men needed to be strung along a little. So she strung him along, and two months later he invited her to spend the summer with him in East Hampton.
    Neely loved East Hampton. She loved Dave’s big house, which he’d been able to keep after the divorce by giving his wife the house in Beverly Hills, the apartment in Greenwich Village, and the condo in Aspen. She loved all the party invitations, as many as a dozen a day on the summer weekends. She loved the humid weather, which did miracles for her skin. She loved that the place was full of gay men, most of whom still thought Broadway was the center of the universe. From behind her big blue sunglasses, she watched them recognize her and nudge each other when she walked through the little shopping district in search of tiny scented soaps and imported hair conditioner and whatever else there was tobuy. That’s right! Neely O’Hara is in town! She was a big, big deal in East Hampton.
    And the fifteen pounds just melted away. Dave wasn’t a stud, but he knew how to use his hands. Like most divorced men, he liked to cuddle, but he was a sound sleeper and Neely could usually pry herself loose after the first annoying half hour.
    The Burkes lived somewhere nearby, but she never saw them. Their names came up in conversation at parties or at the beach, but they seemed to move in a slightly different circle. Neely was relieved. She hadn’t seen Anne in seven years, not since her affair with Lyon. What kind of person cared about who was fucking who seven years ago? But that was so like Anne: making a big deal about sex and never actually having any. Southampton was just the right place for her, with all the other no-talent country-club princesses.
    In August they were invited to one of the most exclusive and talked-about parties of the season, a fund-raiser for an environmental organization at the home of a movie director who had a huge spread right on Georgica Pond. Here was a guy who wouldn’t even say hello to her in a