by Zoey Dean
“Just a sec, Django!” she called, then scampered downstairs, her skimpy robe flying. She opened the heavy front door, ready to tease Django for being such an absentminded musician.
Only it wasn’t Django. It was Ben.
“Hi!” she blurted nervously. “I wasn’t expecting you!” Ben eyed her up and down, taking note of the robe and chemise. “Oh no?” he asked, grinning. “If not me, who?”
“I think me.” Django answered the question for him as he strode up the walk behind Ben, two shopping bags in his hands. “Is this the great Ben? We’ve met, I think.”
He shifted the bags to one hand and stretched out his right one for Ben to shake. Ben took it without enthusiasm.
“We were just about to have dinner,” Anna said by way of lame explanation. The awkwardness didn’t pass, but Django looked about as loose and at ease as a man could get. “This is a great surprise.”
“I called a minute ago, but there was no answer,” Ben said.
Anna pointed upstairs. “My cell’s in my room, sorry.” “And you’re down here. With the … driver.” Clearly the jibe didn’t bother Django, who gave Ben one of his patented no-hat salutes. “I figured since Anna never tasted Ethiopian food, I’d bring some over,” he said, his Louisiana accent more acute than usual. “What say you pull up a plate and visit?”
“I don’t care for Ethiopian, thanks.”
Django nodded. “It’s an acquired taste. Anyway, I can see that Miss Anna just got plans for the evening, so we’ll do it another time. Hang in there, cowboy.” Then he turned and loped down the path toward the guesthouse.
“Something about that guy …” Ben’s eyes were still narrowed.
“My dad’s out of town, he lives on the property, and he’s a really good guy.”
Ben kissed her softly. “Well, this really good guy came over with a surprise. It’s parked out front. Ever seen Los Angeles at night from the Hollywood sign?”
Anna shook her head.
“You can’t. It’s illegal. But there’s a place I know that’s just as good. Go get changed.”
“But I have so much to tell you,” Anna exclaimed. “I went over to Apex so that Margaret could hand me my head. But the most amazing thing happened—”
Ben put a finger to Anna’s lips. “Warm clothes first. We’ll be outside. Then you can tell me on the way, all right?”
“To where?”
“I believe the word surprise is involved,” he reminded her, chuckling.
Anna smiled. “I put myself in your more than capable hands.”
Bundle of Contradictions
“Sorry to get you out of bed so early,” Sam told Anna as they walked through her father’s palatial Bel Air estate to the screening room in the back. “But in the afternoon Poppy has her work crews here doing renovation and the noise is ridiculous. I don’t even come home anymore till they leave.”
It was the next morning before school. Sam had invited Anna over to show her the final cut of the short film they’d made together as a school project for English class, inspired by The Great Gatsby. They’d shot the film the previous weekend at V’s spa in Palm Springs—Sam had handled the camera work and production aspects, and Anna had written the short screenplay. They’d had friends and guests at V’s play the actors and had decided to intercut real-life images to make it a kind of cinema verité. They’d filmed those this past weekend, too.
This would be Anna’s first look at the finished product. She was excited and a little nervous. Writing the screenplay, which she’d titled Three-Way—had been a tremendous amount of fun.
“So, I spoke to Ben,” Sam said as they turned down the wing that held the screening room. “I guess you two get to live happily ever after, huh?”
“We had a great time in Santa Barbara,” Anna agreed. She wasn’t about to add details, such as the before and after state of her former virginity. She and Sam weren’t that kind of friends—at least not yet. Anna was reserving that conversation for her best friend back in New York, Cynthia Baltres.
“So are you guys super-glued at the hip?” Sam quipped.
“Not exactly.” Anna thought about last night, when they’d driven up to Lake Hollywood to take in the view of the city and then gone out for a burger she didn’t even want because she knew how badly that perfectly innocent dinner with Django must have appeared to Ben.
“I guess I owe you an apology, too,” Sam told her as they approached the door to her father’s screening room. “I talked to Adam last night.”
“So I heard, and so did I. After you did,” Anna said ruefully.
“You’re not mad at me?”
Anna shrugged. “You didn’t do it on purpose. Why should I be mad at you? Anyway, I’m having lunch with him later today.”
“Be nice. He’s a great guy.”
“I know.” Sam swung open the door to her dad’s screening room. It was ministadium style, with steeply sloping seats of buttery Italian leather.
“Impressive,” Anna said, taking it all in.
“Hungry?” Sam asked. “I had the cook put out a little something.” She swept her hand toward the rear. By the screening booth was a linen-tablecloth-covered table supporting silver urns of coffee and tea, a stack of Krispy Kreme doughnuts large enough to feed a marine battalion, plus assorted croissants and Danishes. “It’s exactly what you’d find from Craft service at a shoot. I thought it would lend an ironic touch of authenticity.”
“Craft service?”
“Catering,” Sam clarified. “So, take something; I’ll get the film rolling. Sit in the third row. It has the best sound in the room.”
Anna took the plainest doughnut she could find, poured some coffee, and slid into the third row.
“Okay, we’re rolling!” Sam shouted to her. “Lights’ll dim in ten seconds.”
Sam bounded down the stairs and slipped into the seat next to Anna. True to her word, the lights dimmed automatically in exactly ten seconds. Then, with the room pitch-black, the film began.
“I changed the title,” Sam whispered. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Moment by Moment. Anna read the new title as it flashed over an establishing shot of V’s spa to the accompaniment of a classical solo guitar that Anna recognized as Andrés Segovia.
“Nice on the music,” Anna hissed, and felt a grateful squeeze from Sam on her forearm in return. Then the actual film began, and Anna felt as nervous as if she’d just sunk her last hundred million dollars into underwriting it, though she knew the running time was probably going to be less than ten minutes.
The plot was simple. There were three main characters. Dan, played by their friend Parker Pinelli, came from a family that had just made a ton of money in the stock market. Mike, played by a guy they’d met at V’s named Jamie, came from old-line Boston moneyed aristocracy. Both guys wanted a girl named Nina, who was a walking bundle of contradictions. Nina had been played by Dee.
As the film unfolded, Anna found herself transfixed. Sam had done a masterful job of intercutting the character’s monologues with actual footage from the spa as well as directing the actors. Even Dee, who Anna would have expected to be talent-free, managed to bring a certain waiflike charm to the Nina role. The film ended with Mike—who’d been spurned by Nina at the end of the film—directly addressing the camera:
“People can call it passion. Or lust. Or obsession. I don’t really care. When I’m with her, touching her, is the only time I feel completely alive. If you’ve never felt the power of that, then I feel sorry for you.”
Anna remembered writing those words in her suite at V’s as she had worked and reworked the conclusion of her script. She knew she was a different person now. A few days before, she’d written those words from a theoretical viewpoint. Now, a hundred hours or so later, the theoretical had become the actual, with Ben.
The film ended with another long shot of V’s spa, the Segovia music dancing with the soaring song of a desert mockingbird and then being overwhelmed by that mock
ingbird in the same way that Mike’s passion was overwhelming him. The mockingbird’s warble didn’t end until the screen had gone to black and the credits had rolled.
Sam clicked a couple of times on a handheld remote, and the lights in the screening room came back.
“So. Whaddaya think?” Anna could hear the nervousness in Sam’s voice underneath her usual bravado.
Impulsively Anna reached over and hugged her. “I think you’re a genius,” she told her. “It’s fantastic!”
“You really liked it?” Sam asked. “The running time is only seven minutes twenty.”
“I think it’s perfect. I’d love to do another one with you sometime.”
Sam’s smile lit up the screening room. “We’ll see what we can arrange.” She stood up. “I’ll be right back. There’s one other thing I wanted to show you. Then we can face the joy of high school.” Sam scurried back into the screening booth, and the lights in the screening room again went dark as film once again rolled.
Anna gasped. Because what she was watching was film taken from the Mount St. Helens lava rock sauna at V’s spa this past weekend, when Ben had burst unannounced into the sauna and Dee had claimed in front of everyone to be pregnant with Ben’s baby. There was Anna, mortified by all of this. There was Susan, egging the confrontation on with a born instigator’s sensibility of what would rile things up the most.
The footage stopped abruptly, and the room lights came back on. Sam stepped down from the booth. “Good thing I didn’t cut that into our film, huh?” she asked blithely. “It would have been quite the scandale.”
Anna felt hurt. “Why did you show me that?” “Cards up on the table, of course,” Sam told her. “Now you know you can trust me. Shall I do the honors or will you?” she asked as she took the tape out of the projection machine, threw it to the floor, and poised her foot to step on it.
“Go ahead,” Anna said. Sam smiled and literally stomped on the tape until it shattered. Then she dumped the whole mess in the trash. “All gone.”
“Thank God,” Anna said.
“No,” Sam corrected with a smile. “Thank me. After all, what are true friends for?”
“So you’ll be able to come?”
“Aye-aye, sir,” Anna told Ben, holding the cell phone close to her ear as a big truck rolled by on Beverly Boulevard. “As long as the captain promises that this voyage will end more satisfactorily than the last one.”
“On my life.”
“I’ll hold you to it.” Anna saw Adam pull up in front of the restaurant on his bicycle. “Ben, I’ve got to go,” she told him. “But I look forward to it.”
“Pick you up at seven, then,” he said. “I miss you already.”
Anna hung up just as Adam strolled up to the outdoor table she’d selected at Jerry’s Deli, directly across from the famous Beverly Center indoor shopping mall. She’d offered to drive, but Adam said that he’d be more comfortable on his bicycle.
That way, Anna realized, he can get up and leave whenever he wants to and not have to drive back to school with me. In a way, I guess I can’t blame him.
“Hi,” she said, standing. She felt like an idiot when she offered him her hand to shake, but she did it anyway. He took it without betraying emotion, nodded somewhat curtly, and then sat down. The place was crowded—a mix of West Hollywood actor types and tourists.
“I’m glad you decided to come,” she told him. “I just feel like there’s a lot that hasn’t been said that needs to be said.”
He took the enormous Jerry’s menu out of the metal holder and scanned it idly. “Stick to the mile-high pastrami,” he advised her. “You won’t be sorry.”
But suddenly Anna’s appetite was gone. Adam was such a truly decent human being. She cared about him. A lot. And though their relationship had been brief, he’d never been anything except wonderful to her. She cleared her throat. “I know Sam told you about me and Ben… .”
The waitress swung over to their table. Adam ordered the pastrami. Anna settled for a buttered bagel and coffee.
“You didn’t have to invite me to lunch to confirm that,” Adam said. “The only thing that pisses me off is why you didn’t just tell me the truth in the first place.”
“I did tell you the truth. When I stopped seeing you, it wasn’t to see him or anyone else. Then … things changed.”
His gaze at her was jaundiced. “Come on, Anna. I’m a big boy.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I wanted to be alone and figure out my life.”
Adam sipped his water. “Well, evidently you figured it out pretty quickly.”
Anna sighed. “I deserve that. I know I do. And I can’t make any excuses. But … I hope when you’re less upset, we can stay friends.”
Adam laughed. “Come on, Anna. Can’t you do better than that? ‘We can stay friends’?”
“Well, I do,” Anna said defensively. “You’re a great guy. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with you?”
The waitress brought Adam his sandwich and Anna her bagel. Clearly his appetite wasn’t affected, because he took a huge bite before speaking again. “Has any guy ever said yes to, ‘I hope when you’re less upset, we can stay friends’?”
Anna’s cheeks reddened. “Quite the cliché, huh.” “No kidding. I should get those words tattooed on my chest because I’ve heard them so many times. And I’ve had this conversation before, too. Once in a Starbucks in Ann Arbor, once in a campground on Lake Michigan, and once outside the guys’ locker room at Michigan State University just before the quarterfinals of the state high-school tournament. Not with the same girl, either. You know, I wish I’d patented that line. I’d be rich by now.”
“I’m sorry, Adam. I’m just … I don’t know what else to say.”
He raised his right hand. “Waitress?”
The blond waitress saw his gesture and came over to him. Her nameplate said Natasha.
“Ti gavoreet po-russki, Natasha?”
The waitress grinned. “Da,” she said. “Ti Amerikanits?”
Adam smiled at her and fired off a half minute of unintelligible Russian as Natasha nodded gravely.
“Da. Pazalstra. I wrap your sandwich for you.” Then she looked at Anna. “This guy, he speak perfect Russian. He good guy. You be sorry someday.” She patted Adam’s arm, turned on her heel, and stormed away. Anna recalled that during one of their many long conversations, Adam had mentioned that he spoke “some Russian.” Evidently it was more than “some.”
“What’d you say to her?”
“Not, ‘When you’re less upset, I hope we can be friends.’”
Anna nodded. Though she’d wanted to bare her soul to Adam, to make him understand that she really hadn’t planned to hurt him, she found that there was nothing else to say.
“I like you, Anna Percy. I like you a lot. But the friendship thing … I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”
With that, Adam stood, picked up his sandwich, now wrapped to go, and dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “For mine and yours,” he said. “See ya at school.”
Anna stared down at her coffee until she was sure that Adam was well on his way back to Beverly Hills High. At the moment, she didn’t like herself very much at all.
Faux Sincerity
“I like this,” Patrice’s daughter, Mia, said as she slammed into Cammie’s room without knocking and headed for the floor-length, three-way mirror. She spun around, checking out her reflection from all angles.
Cammie had been flipping through the new Los Angeles magazine to see if her photo had made it in that month—God knew she’d been to enough movie openings and high-profile parties in the last month to deserve it. There was a big spread on Jackson Sharpe’s wedding; there was even a picture of that bitch Anna Percy with Ben Birnbaum standing with the hosts of Good Day, L.A., the top-rated early morning show in the city. The hosts were identified by name, Anna and Ben as “an unidentified handsome couple.”
There was nothing of Cammie.
Se
ething, she looked up to see Mia twirling before her mirror in a burgundy Betseyville-by-Betsey-Johnson sequined velvet miniskirt and pink Tracy Reese silk chiffon bustier. The outfit was great. The fact that Cammie had purchased it two weeks ago at Barney’s and hadn’t even taken it out of its box was not.
“What did you do? Sneak into my closet?” Cammie demanded.
Mia turned, hands on her narrow hips. “Shows what you know. My mom said I could try on your clothes.”
Cammie folded her arms. “Well, I say you can’t.” “Jeez. I was just trying to be nice,” Mia muttered under her breath as she flounced out of the room, still wearing Cammie’s bustier.
Cammie lay back on the stack of white and cream silk pillows atop her extra-king-size teak platform bed and sighed. Her “stepsister” had moved in a mere sixteen hours ago, and it had taken a mere sixteen minutes for Cammie to detest her.
Clark had sent his driver to pick the girl up in the valley. When they returned, he had carried in an endless number of cheap suitcases, followed by a coltish girl with choppy, flaming red hair and a petulant look. She wore low-cut cheap jeans that Cammie didn’t recognize and a black T-shirt with Teen Millionaire sequined over her nearly nonexistent breasts. Over the tee was a mini red pleather jacket—at least Cammie thought that was what the material was called—that hideous plastic shit made to look like leather. On her feet were pink Converse All Stars with pink shoelaces. The outfit alone sufficed to make Cammie want to lose her lunch (she wasn’t one of the many girls at Beverly Hills High who voluntarily sacrificed their midday meal in the BHH “Binge and Barf” club, either).
Then there was Mia’s makeup. Chalk white eye shadow and black liquid eyeliner. Nothing else. Ugh.
A maid had helped Mia settle in since Patrice was at the Fox lot re-looping some dialogue for a featured role she had in the new Adam Sandler movie. From the moment they’d been introduced, Cammie had tried to simply avoid the girl. The driver had taken her to her school in the valley that morning and picked her up afterward. Meanwhile, Cammie had gone to the Beverly Hills Hotel with Dee to have espresso and see if any hot guys were wandering around. Mia had beaten her home. And evidently had sashayed into Cammie’s room to do a search-and-expropriate of any clothes that struck her valley girl fancy.