City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(36)

In adolescence her body developed differently from her idol’s. She had MM’s bust, but her legs grew long and lean. Her face took on a sculpted sharpness, as opposed to MM’s softness; her lips were thinner, her mouth wider.

She wasn’t disappointed. Darlene marked the looks she got from boys at school, men on the street, the envious glances from women; she knew she was attractive, that she could have any boy she wanted.

Darlene didn’t want any of them.

Not in Barstow.

Darlene wanted Hollywood.

What she didn’t want was to get knocked up. Darlene didn’t want to sleep with some boy in Barstow, get pregnant, become her mother. She maintained an iron discipline with the few boys she dated. She would go parking, but only in the front seat. She’d allow them to touch her breasts, but only over her sweater, and never anything below the waist. She would French kiss, once rubbed a boy’s crotch over his jeans, but no matter how they begged, how they whined about “blue balls,” she wouldn’t jerk them off, never mind give them blow jobs.

It was as frustrating for her as for them, and after a night of frantic fumbling and rigid resistance, she would go home, get into bed and satisfy herself.

Of course, her reputation for promiscuity rose in direct inverse ratio to the reality of her chastity. In revenge for her refusals, the boys bragged about what they did to her, what she did for them; they called her “Darleasy” and “Whorelene.”

She had no friends—the other girls were either jealous or judgmental. The boys either tried to screw her or stayed away because they knew they couldn’t. Her siblings were more her children.

Darlene was lonely, but in a personality as strong as hers, loneliness becomes self-sufficiency. She was enough for herself, saw herself as alone in the world, that the only person she could rely on was the girl in the mirror, and was okay with it.

The girl in the mirror wasn’t Darleasy or Whorelene.

She was Madeleine McKay.

Rich and independent.

Glamour girl.

Movie star.

She went the other way with it.

Literally.

In those days, the chief reason for the existence of Barstow was as a halfway point between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The former lay to the west, the latter to the east, on Highway 15.

When she was seventeen, Darlene looked into the mirror and took stock, a cold-blooded objective inventory. She was five feet, ten inches tall—too tall to be a movie star. That this was unfair occurred to her only briefly—she dismissed the sexism as reality and decided that the road to her future was to the east.

In Las Vegas, the longer the legs, the taller the girl, the better.

If she couldn’t become an actress, she would be a showgirl.

It wasn’t her dream, but it was better than being a waitress, a mother, or a housewife.

So one night, Darlene dutifully bathed her brothers and sisters and put them to bed. She arranged their clothes, fixed their lunches for morning and put them in the refrigerator. Then she packed her few things in a small bag, walked out the door to a truck stop just off Route 15 and stuck out her thumb.

She was picked up immediately.

In some of the first good luck of her life, the driver only wanted a little company, even bought her a burger when they made a stop in Baker, and delivered her on the Las Vegas Strip unmolested.

His name was Glen and she never forgot him.

In Las Vegas, pretty girls were like flecks of metal and magnets were everywhere. High rollers, low rollers, pimps, gangsters, managers, agents, talent scouts, and combination plates of all of them.

Darlene was lucky again.

Stuffing herself at the buffet in a cheap casino hotel, she was spotted by a relatively honest, relatively nonpredatory agent-manager by the name of Shelly Stone, who approached her with his card in his hand. “Are you looking for work, young lady?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?” Shelly asked.

“Madeleine McKay.”

She picked the name because it sounded like Marilyn and besides, it was French and classy.

“Nice name.” He pretended to believe her. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

He pretended to believe that, too. She certainly looked twenty-one, like an adult, anyway. “Can you dance?”

“Yes.”

This he didn’t even pretend to believe. But for the starter jobs he had in mind for her, she didn’t really have to dance, all she had to do was walk and hold her head up. Which wasn’t as easy as it sounded, but the girl had a confidence about her that he liked.

“If I get you a job, I get ten percent of everything you make,” Shelly said. “I pick up your paycheck, I give you your money.”

“No,” Madeleine said. “I pick up my paycheck, I give you your money.”

Shelly laughed.

This girl was going to make it.

He got her a decent motel room and told her it was an advance against her first paycheck. The next morning he took her to an audition at one of the lesser shows in town, where the director, whom Shelly had known since Christ was a road guard, looked her over like a piece of meat and liked what he saw. “You’re a gazelle with boobs. What experience do you have?”

“None.”

“Good,” he said. “I won’t have to unteach. You come every night, you watch the show, first girl who gets sick or noticeably knocked up, you fill in.”