Blonde Ambition

by Zoey Dean

  A memory, long buried, flitted into her mind. Of her father, there one day and then … gone. Her mother wouldn’t talk about it. In fact, it was nearly a year until she informed her daughters that she and their father had gone through a very civil divorce and Jonathan Percy was now living in Beverly Hills, California, his hometown. She wanted to tell Ben about this. Yet something stopped her. For all her insight into “bonding,” Anna knew little about intimacy. God knew she hadn’t learned it from the This Is How We Do Things

  Big Book, East Coast WASP edition. Sharing something so personal was number one in that apocryphal book’s “Thou Shalt Nots.”

  So she didn’t. Instead she sipped her coffee and tried to enjoy the moment for what it was.

  Ninety minutes later they’d docked at Marina del Rey, secured the boat, and made their way back to Ben’s parked car. Ben cranked the heater, gallantly making sure that the vents were pointed at Anna as they pulled out of the marina’s parking lot. “Have fun?”

  “It was wonderful,” Anna assured him. She kissed her fingertips and touched them to his cheek as her eyes flicked to the clock on his dashboard. Nearly midnight. Theoretically there was school the next day.

  On the boat ride back to the marina Anna had filled Ben in on how she’d be interning for Clark Sheppard at the Apex agency. And now, as they drove back to Beverly Hills, she found herself thinking about it … as well as the look Cammie had fired in her direction when Clark had summarily dismissed his daughter from his office.

  Evidently the subject was on Ben’s mind, too. Out of nowhere he said, “Listen, watch your elegant ass around Cammie Sheppard, okay?”

  “I have no interest in giving her a moment’s thought.”

  “She’s capable of pretty much anything.”

  “You’re aware that she still wants you back,” Anna pointed out.

  “She knows I’m not interested.”

  Something made Anna press the point as Ben sped north on Lincoln Boulevard toward the 10 freeway. “You’re the one who said she’s capable of anything. She could hop on a jet and show up at Princeton.”

  “Don’t care, Anna.” He pressed a button on the dashboard, and cool jazz filled his Nissan’s interior.

  “Sorry about the sound system,” Ben apologized. “This is a rental car, remember.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The sound. But going back to school—you must think about it,” Anna said. She twisted around so she could see him.

  “Only because you keep bringing it up.”

  “But school is—”

  “Can’t we just be here, now? Can’t we?”

  She sat back. Why wouldn’t he talk about Princeton? It wasn’t like it was a state secret. The crisis at his house was over, he’d told her. Why was he still hanging around Beverly Hills?

  “What happens when I do go back, Anna?” he asked, staring hard at the road.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the Contessa and the Southern-Fried Chauffeur.”

  Anna’s jaw flapped open. “Are you talking about Django?”

  “The way he looks at you—”

  “Ben. We’re friends.”

  “Close friends?” Ben probed. “Close personal friends?”

  Heat came to Anna’s face. “I don’t deserve that.”

  His hands gripped the steering wheel. “The idea of being on the other side of the country, being without you, and he lives right there, it’s just …”

  Anna put a slender hand on Ben’s thigh. “Django and I are friends,” she said again.

  He nodded, then cranked up the music. They didn’t talk again until they reached her father’s house, where he parked in the circular driveway and took her into his arms. “Hey. Sorry about before. I just care about you so damn much.”

  “It’s okay.” She kissed him softly. “It’s forgotten.” He walked her to the door and kissed her again. She thanked him for an incredible evening, then watched him drive away. And out of the corner of her eye, she couldn’t help noticing that the lights in Django’s guest-house were still illuminated.

  Nice-ta-meetcha

  “So I was wondering if you might stop by the Well office sometime this afternoon so we could do an interview.”

  “I don’t know … ,” Anna said, stifling an unintentional yawn. “I mean, I just—”

  “Come on,” cajoled Juliet Dinkins, editor in chief of the Beverly Hills High newspaper, the Well. “The whole school already knows that you’re working on Hermosa Beach anyway. It’s not like it’s some big secret.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone.”

  Juliet laughed. “Welcome to L.A.”

  Anna had been eating lunch alone at one of the picnic tables in the quadrangle. Tired from her late night with Ben, she hoped the yogurt and fruit she was about to eat would help perk her up. She had been reading Love and Death in the American Novel, the seminal—in more ways than one—collection of essays by the late literary critic Leslie Fiedler and spooning vanilla yogurt into her mouth when Juliet had come running over to her, steno notebook in hand.

  “Look. I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll give you the questions in advance,” Juliet said, her lustrous dark hair glinting in the noonday sun. “Is it true that Clark Sheppard picked you from out of a thousand applicants? What exactly are you going to be doing? What kind of connections did you use to get this gig? What’s it like on the set of the show? Is Scott Stoddard, the star, really gay, or is that just a rumor? Can we come down to the beach to do an interview with the cast?”

  Anna shook her head, thinking that this was insane. She hadn’t told anyone about her new gig at Apex—not even Sam. But word had spread like wildfire, which meant the most likely explanation was that Cammie had gotten the news from her father after Anna departed. Surely Cammie would have demanded to know why Anna was in her dad’s office. Surely Clark Sheppard had told her.

  However the word had leaked, kids were coming up to her—kids she didn’t even know!—all through her morning classes to either offer congratulations or wheedle favors. There were plenty of young actors at Beverly Hills High; each of them instantly realized that Anna could be their ticket to a guest TV appearance or, at the very least, an audition.

  “I can’t answer those questions,” Anna told Juliet. Juliet’s eyebrows shot up. “Can’t or won’t?”

  Anna polished her apple on her camel-colored cashmere sweater. “There are dozens of kids at this school who’ve been on TV or in a film. I just don’t see why my internship is of any particular interest.”

  “Come on, Anna. Anyone with a pretty face, buff biceps, or a parent in the business can be on TV,” Juliet said. “But Hermosa Beach is supposed to be the hot new show. There are billboards for it all over town. You’re working on it, and for one of the most powerful people in this town. In other words, Anna, you hit the Powerball jackpot, even if you’re too naive to know it, which I somehow don’t think you are. So about the interview—”

  “Juliet, listen. I haven’t even had my first day on the show yet,” Anna interrupted. “And I can’t do an interview without clearing it with Mr. Sheppard.”

  Juliet stood. “Whatever. If you don’t cooperate, I might have to do the story without you. And you know how misleading that can be. It might even come out wrong—like maybe you got the gig because you’re doing ‘Mr. Sheppard.’”

  “Because that’s just the kind of smut Beverly Hills High is apt to allow into their newspaper …”

  Juliet shook her hair off her shoulders. “You may have made it to the top of the Beverly Hills High social ladder in record time, but never doubt my ability to get things done my way,” she said as she smiled confidently and walked away.

  Unbelievable. A high school newspaper editor was threatening to do a libelous exposé on her? What was wrong with this town?

  As soon as Juliet was gone, Sam rushed over and sat down. “She wants to interview you,” she guessed. “For the paper.”

  “More like she wants to write somethi
ng juicy enough for her tear sheets to make an impression when she applies for her next summer internship,” Anna guessed.

  “She’s a barracuda. But if you give her the interview, she probably won’t bite hard enough to draw blood.”

  Anna almost laughed. “Am I supposed to find that reassuring?”

  Sam waved an airy hand. “Don’t even worry about it. I can sit on her if you want. I know things she definitely doesn’t want known by the general public.” Sam leaned closer. “So how’d you pull this one off?”

  “I went to Apex to talk to Margaret—”

  “You were so sure she was going to fire you.”

  “She did, he didn’t. I think it’s some kind of power struggle. Anyway, Cammie’s dad walked in; ten minutes later he was asking me to intern for him.”

  Sam looped some glossy, perfectly-streaked-by-Raymond chestnut hair behind her ear, exposing her new eighteen-karat-gold double-tier drop earrings with aqua-marine and peridot from the Lauren Harper Collection. “So, how pissed off did that make Margaret?”

  “On a scale of one to ten, I’d say she was pushing eleven,” Anna admitted.

  “Good!” Sam laughed. “Guess who’s pushing twelve?”

  “Cammie.” Anna groaned.

  “Right on the first guess.”

  Anna spooned some yogurt into her mouth. “I’m not getting involved in her latest drama. If she’s angry at anyone, it should be at her father, not me. Besides, according to her father, she wouldn’t want my job even if she could have it.”

  “True enough, but—hold on.” Sam stood and waved her arms, trying to get the attention of a blue-jacketed man in his forties looking uncertainly around the quadrangle. “Hey! Over here!”

  The man heard Sam, turned and waved in her direction, and came trotting over. “Leslie Newsom?” the guy asked.

  “That’s me,” Sam confirmed as Anna looked on, baffled.

  “Lunch delivery.” The man handed her a plastic bag from a French restaurant named Le Morvan and then Sam quickly signed a receipt—Anna could see that she signed it “Leslie N.” Sam tipped the deliveryman ten bucks. He gave her ten bucks’ worth of thanks and left.

  Sam opened the bag and extracted two plastic-plate-shaped containers, a bottle of red juice, and utensils. “Power Eating,” she confided to Anna. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “What’s Power Eating?” So often Anna—who’d traveled all over the world—felt like Los Angeles was an alien universe, where she needed a full-time cultural guide in order to understand the natives.

  Sam took the plastic top off one of the containers and sniffed it. “Ugh. Rabbit food. It’s like the Zone, but better. They cook all the food you eat and deliver it to you four times a day. You never have to shop and you never have to cook. But the best part is they deliver it in bags from fake restaurants so no one would suspect you’re on it.” She forked into an already cut-up chicken breast, put it to her lips, and tasted it. “God, that sucks.”

  “Why don’t you just eat regular food?” Anna asked. “I woke up today, I looked in the mirror, and I almost barfed,” Sam said. She held up a hand quickly. “And please don’t start with the ‘you look fine’ bullshit. I’m a cow. So I had my dad’s assistant call Power Eating for me, and I told her to register me under the name Leslie Newsom. Whoever she is.” She took a bite of green salad. “Bleech! This tastes like ass.”

  Anna had to laugh. She really did like the girl, even if Sam did keep some strange company sometimes. “One more question. How’d the school paper get its name? The Well? That’s kind of strange.”

  Sam speared another cube of chicken and forked it into her mouth. “There’s crude oil under our high school. And a working oil well. Up behind the maintenance yards. That big building, covered with paintings of flowers?”

  Anna’s jaw fell open. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Turns out Jed Clampett could have done his hunting out here.”

  “Jed Clampett?” For the umpteenth time since she’d arrived in L.A., Anna felt like an idiot.

  “Beverly Hillbillies? Sixties sitcom? Mirror image to Paris Hilton’s The Simple Life?”

  “I am totally lost,” Anna admitted.

  “And you’re going to work in TV?” Sam smiled sadly. “Nothing makes any sense in this town. Welcome to Hollywood.”

  The character of Mike walked across the desert floor—the sound was good enough to pick up the rhythmic crunch-crunch of his steps. Then he turned, crossed his arms, and addressed 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.”

  He held his gaze steady, focused on something in the distance. Then he turned and walked out of the frame, so that the camera took in the expanse of the Palm Springs desert—the lifeless landscape and the soaring sandstone mountain. Sam had made a last-minute edit at Anna’s suggestion: rather than ending with another long shot of Veronique’s spa, the last image was the glorious expanse of the desert itself. The Segovia music came up and mixed with the song of the desert mockingbird until the mockingbird overwhelmed the guitar entirely.

  Then the credits started to roll: Directed by: Samantha Sharpe. Written by: Anna Percy. And a huge, rolling wave of applause and whoops swept through Mrs. Breckner’s English class.

  As the lights came up, Anna could see that even Mrs. Breckner and Dee were clapping. In fact, the only person who wasn’t was Cammie.

  Mrs. Breckner nodded at Sam, then at Anna. “Really fine work on Gatsby. Maybe this is the start of something great for the two of you.”

  “We’re already on to our next project,” Sam said. “This one’s a feature called Three-Way. Anna’s in the middle of the screenplay. My dad’s financing, and we’ll be shooting in the spring.”

  Electric excitement swept through the classroom. The five girls who considered themselves “actors” (the term actress, Anna had learned, was gauche) sat up straighter, or stuck their breasts out, or swung their hair—anything to attract attention. It was one thing for Sam to do a student film and quite another for her to be working on a feature—however low budget it might turn out to be—financed by one of the biggest movie stars in the world, her father.

  All of which was fine, from Anna’s point of view. Except for the fact that she had no idea what Sam was talking about.

  “Tell us more,” called Heather Chasen, who wore a geometric Marc Jacobs mini and had drawn fake lashes below her real ones for a retro Twiggy look. “Does this have anything to do with Anna working on Hermosa Beach?”

  Others started calling out questions: How many roles would there be? When would auditions be? When could they see a copy of the script?

  Anna shot Sam a look that conveyed, she hoped, her shock. Sam was clearly unperturbed by it. “As soon as possible, we’ll let you know,” she said smoothly. Then the bell rang, but instead of dashing for the exits, half the class gathered around Anna and Sam.

  “I didn’t know Sam and Anna were working on a feature, did you?” Dee asked as she and Cammie left the classroom.

  “Guess what? I don’t care,” Cammie said.

  Tiny Dee had to walk double time to keep up with Cammie’s long strides. “Just remember, animosity turns loose free radicals. And this isn’t a theory. It was in the Monday Health section of the Los Angeles Times. I think.”

  “Dee?”

  “Yes?

  “Be quiet.” Cammie was in no mood to hear any of Dee’s theories on life, health, or the new age. She knew it was but three sentences from animosity and free radicals to the therapeutic nature of high colonics. But the only person she wanted to get a high colonic right now—preferably with sulfuric acid—was her so-called friend Sam. How could she be working on a feature with the A-word and not even mention it? Where were her loyalties?

  “Stevie!” Dee exclaimed, waving to a guy walking toward them. Cammi
e didn’t recognize him. Which meant he didn’t go to BHH, where she knew everyone who was anyone.

  When the guy reached Dee, he kissed her and kept an arm looped around her tiny shoulders. “Thought I’d come check it out,” the guy said with a heavy New York accent. The word thought came out like the word taught.

  Dubious grasp on diction notwithstanding, Cammie had to admit he was hot, whoever he was, though in a trying-too-hard kind of way. He was tall and lanky, with jet black hair that fell forward almost over his cheekbones. And he wore regulation rock-and-roll black— black jeans, black tee, black leather jacket. The pants had to go. But other than that, he was quite the tasty treat.

  “This is Stevie Novellino,” Dee told Cammie. “From New York.”

  “Brooklyn,” Stevie corrected.

  “Brooklyn,” Dee echoed. “He plays guitar for Border Cross. You know, the band my dad’s producing? They’re in town to do a show tomorrow. At the Hollywood Bowl.”

  “Opening for … ?” Cammie asked, since she’d never heard of Border Cross.

  “Beck,” Stevie said. “You know Beck?”

  Cammie smiled. “He’s a client of a friend of mine.” “You should come ’n check it out tomorrow night,” Stevie went on, shaking hair out of his eyes.

  “Stevie’s band just got signed to Sony,” Dee reported excitedly. “And my dad’s producing the new CD. Isn’t that cool? We met the last time I was in New York. My dad introduced us.”

  “Wow,” Cammie deadpanned. But her sarcasm was clearly lost on both Dee and this guy, who was evidently her new squeeze.

  “I know, it’s so cool!” Dee chirped. She stood on tiptoe to give Stevie a kiss. He turned it into a full-on make-out session, as if Cammie had nothing better to do than to stand there in her Badgley Mischka baby blue suede boots and watch this seventh-grade-cool twelfth-grade-sad suck-face fest.

  In fact, as the kiss crossed from affectionate to disgusting, Cammie fumed anew. What was happening? Why was this the first time that she was hearing about this guy Stevie Novellino? Dee always confided in her, at least in the past. Was Dee joining the Sam express that was pulling away from her, too?