Free The Fame Game by Rona Jaffe

did not tell him. Then the twins’ sister, Ardra, arrived, and after her, Silky’s brother, Cornelius. The girls sent down for more pillows and blankets, and all their guests settled comfortably on the floor. Rich Marvin wanted Tamara to live with him in the Village, but she thought the Chelsea was more fun. The boys bought beer and Bourbon with money the girls gave them, and there were parties every night. Sometimes they would buy big bags of fish and chips and break their diets, drink and stuff themselves, and dance and sing to the stereo the girls had chipped in to buy. They bought about a hundred and fifty records, and then they bought a color television set, and nobody ever got much sleep except Silky, who was terrified that she would lose her voice if she didn’t take care of herself, and who had long ago learned how to fall asleep through any kind of racket.
    The Chelsea was really a groovy place, full of nuts like themselves, and they made a few new friends. One of them was a good-looking black boy named Hatcher Wilson, who was a singer, too, and played the electric guitar. He was twenty-four, and he liked Silky. She liked him, too, but she remembered her vow, and she told him she wanted him for a friend, not a boyfriend. He hung around anyway, mainly because she didn’t pay much attention to him and he wasn’t used to that. Hatcher was a real ladies’ man, and terribly vain about his looks and his clothes. The other girls thought Silky was crazy not to get some use out of a fine-looking stud like him, and they flirted with him and made him feel right at home.
    “If you don’t grab that Hatcher Wilson,” Tamara kept threatening, “I’m goin’ to grab him and marry him.” Tamara was going to marry everybody; if it wasn’t rich Marvin to get his money, it was her own cousin Lester to raise halfwits.
    “I ain’t goin’ to marry anybody ,” Honey said. “Not me. I been married a hundred times.”
    They all wondered about Mrs. Libra, how she ever could have married an ugly freak like Mr. Libra. “What do they ever do in bed?” Honey would ask, and they would all howl with laughter trying to imagine that ape in bed with his wife.
    “She jus’ throws him a banana and says: Come git it, King Kong!” Beryl screeched, rolling on the bed with laughter.
    They all agreed Lizzie Libra was a good-looking woman. “I bet she’s got somebody else,” Cheryl said wisely.
    “You think so?”
    “Yeah,” Cheryl said. “Wouldn’t you, married to that? ”
    “She looks kind of dried up,” Honey said.
    “Don’t you kid yourself,” Cheryl said. “Did you ever look at her eyes? That woman got real man-hungry eyes.”
    They all decided to take a good look at Mrs. Libra’s eyes the next time they saw her.
    It was a good time, that month before their first television show. It was a real good time. Later Silky was to look back on it and remember it as the last good time of her life.
    The girls rehearsed the Let It All Hang Out Show for two days. Silky was so nervous she couldn’t eat a thing the entire time, except for many cups of tea laced with honey for her throat. She kept feeling her throat close up, as if she would never be able to get a note out of it, and although she was not a religious person she prayed almost constantly that everything would be all right. The only thing that kept her going was the young director, Dick Devere. He was a tall, skinny, distinguished-looking man, with a calm, professional attitude that set her at ease whenever he spoke to her. It was only when she was not actually the focus of his attention that the panic began again. This show wasn’t just one of those free benefits; it was the big time.
    From the moment Dick Devere first spoke to her, or actually to all the girls, Silky admired him. He had this real cultural way of speaking, the way he pronounced words. And he dressed in a way that wasn’t at all sharp but certainly was hip. She knew his clothes were expensive. And