by Zoey Dean
As she jerked her hand away, she caught a tight-end view of Princeton Boy on his way to the bathroom. Doubtless he’d seen her hand under Rick’s. Great. She threw back the last of her third drink.
Rick was impressed. “Whoa. Who knew you were such a party girl?”
“Paige?”
Anna looked up. Princeton Boy smiled expectantly down at her. Which was like a dream come true. For some girl named Paige.
“Sorry, my name isn’t—”
“I’m Jack,” said Princeton Boy. “We met at … Oh, come on. You must remember. Paige.”
“Bro’, her name is Annie,” ever-helpful Rick chimed in.
Not true. But it wasn’t Paige, either. Whoever that lucky bitch was.
Anna shook her head. “I’m sorry. I really do think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
PB chuckled and shook his head. “I know it’s you. It was—what, last October? At Lambda Chi. This drunk-off-his-ass guy had you cornered, and you were too polite to tell him off.”
Anna was about to deny it when the truth dawned; if it hadn’t been for alcohol-induced stupidity, she would have caught on sooner. PB had never really met her before. He was concocting this story in an attempt to extricate her from “some drunk-off-his-ass guy” who had her cornered that very minute.
“Oh, right. Of course! Jack … Kerouac!” Anna playfully tapped her forehead, as if to say, How could I have forgotten?
She’d given him the name of a famous beatnik writer from the fifties and could tell by his broad grin that he got the joke. “That’s me,” PB agreed. “You look great, Paige. How’s it going?”
“Yo, let’s go to the videotape,” RR interjected. “She told me her name was Annie.”
Anna’s eyes stayed on PB. “Actually, I told you that my name was Anaïs Nin.”
“Anaïs. I like it,” PB said.
RR threw up his hands. “What am I, monkey-in-the-freakin’-middle? Buddy, you never saw this chick before in your life. And we’re in the middle of a private conversation here.”
PB bent down to meet RR at eye level. “No offense, dude, but she doesn’t want to have any kind of conversation with you. Now be cool and trade seats with me, and I won’t have to report that Thai stick in your carry-on.”
“Screw you, buddy! I don’t have any—”
Anna smiled politely. “Then why did you offer me some—how did you put it?—‘primo shit,’” she said, hardly believing her own audacity. Yes! Score for Anna!
PB pointed at his empty seat across the aisle. “It’s got your name on it.” RR cursed under his breath but moved. PB slid in next to Anna. A dimple played in his left cheek. “I have a confession to make. I’m not really Jack Kerouac.”
“That’s okay. I’m not really Anaïs Nin—not that my former seatmate would know the difference,” Anna said, gesturing toward RR, who was stumbling to his new seat. “I guess he’s not up on erotic French surrealism.”
PB was duly impressed. “But you are. You don’t look like that kind of girl.”
“What kind of girl do I look like?”
He considered for a moment. “Prep-school-cool enough to drive with your legs crossed.”
“That’ll teach you to judge a book by its cover, Jack.”
“Ben, actually.” He held out his hand. “Birnbaum.”
She took it. “Anna Percy.” He had great hands. She didn’t let go.
That was when Anna had her epiphany: It was happening. It was really happening. Thirteen years of Cynicism had not gone for naught after all. Okay, the witty repartee was fueled by more alcohol than she’d ever consumed before in her life, but just the same … she was flirting with Ben Birnbaum. “It was very gallant of you to rescue me, Ben Birnbaum.”
“I felt your death wish clear across the aisle. What else could I do?”
“That palpable, huh?”
Ben cocked his head at her. “I’m shaking the hand of a beautiful, mysterious, and literate girl who just used the word palpable.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Very. Plus you didn’t say ‘like’ in the middle of your, like, sentence.”
“And that’s, like, unusual, too?”
“Oh yeah. Beauty and brains. Hot as hell.”
At that moment, for the first time in her life, Anna felt hot. She liked it. A lot. “Want to hear more?”
He nodded.
She leaned closer. “Verisimilitude. Diaphanous. Transcendent.”
He watched her mouth. “Who are you?”
“Does it matter?” She passed him her vodka tonic. He took a sip and handed it back to her.
“Yes, it does. Very much so.”
Anna melted into her seat. He was a freshman at Princeton, flying home for a wedding. She told him her home was Manhattan but that she’d be in Los Angeles with her father for a while, doing a six-month internship at the Randall Prescott Literary Agency; then it was off to Yale in the autumn. The flight attendant announced some loser movie, and people began pulling down their window shades. They kept their conversation going through most of the movie, but all Anna could think of was how badly she wanted to tear his clothes off.
Ben brushed her hair off her face. “I want to be alone with you.”
Suddenly he stood up and stepped into the aisle. His eyes flicked from Anna to the bathroom. In other words, Follow me.
This, Anna figured, this is the true official test of my new life.
She followed him.
The door shut behind Anna, and Ben lifted her onto the sink. They kissed until Anna couldn’t breathe and then, just as Anna was beginning to truly forget herself …
Knock-knock-knock. Followed by a really loud, really pissed-off voice.
“THIS IS THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT. IT IS AGAINST FEDERAL REGULATIONS FOR THE LAVATORY TO BE OCCUPIED BY MORE THAN ONE PERSON AT A TIME. OPEN THIS DOOR IMMEDIATELY!”
Anna jumped off the sink, smoothing her hair and straightening her clothes. Before she could reach for the interior handle, the flight attendant had popped open the door with some supersecret device. With turquoise eye shadow and helmet hair, she looked exactly like Miss Corrigan, Anna’s hated third-grade teacher.
Just as Anna and Ben stepped out into the aisle, the movie ended. Miss Corrigan gave them a quick once-over punctuated by a brisk about-face. Her silence underscored her contempt. Everyone in first class was staring at them. Rick, grinning smugly, stood with two flight attendants and one livid copilot.
The copilot shook Rick’s hand. “Thank you for reporting this, sir.” He turned to Ben and Anna. “Back in your seats. Now.”
Anna wished a hole would open in the floor of the plane so that she could fall through and float away. No such luck. Her face burned as they sat down again. She could barely make eye contact with Ben.
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Ben said as he gently took her chin in his hand and pulled her head toward him. “Look at it this way. We added dollar value to a cross-country flight. I’m sure we were more entertaining than that dog of a movie.”
“I’d rather not be their entertainment. God. Maybe I can hire a hypnotist to erase it from my memory.”
Ben chuckled. “You, Anna Percy, are unlike any girl I have ever known.”
Since the moment they’d met, she’d been unlike any girl she’d ever known herself to be, either. But he had no way of knowing that.
Ben gazed into her eyes. “I don’t want to say goodbye to you when we land.”
Neither do I …
“I’ll give you my cell number,” Anna offered, in as breezy a tone as she could muster. She jotted it down on a cocktail napkin that had somehow found its way into her purse.
“I just got a crazy idea,” Ben said as he stuck the napkin in his pocket. “Why don’t you come with me to the wedding?”
Anna laughed. “You can’t be serious.”
“C’mon. It’s Jackson Sharpe’s wedding. It’ll be a blast.”
“No one invites someone they just met to a—
” Anna stopped and hit mental rewind. “Wait. Did you just say Jackson Sharpe? The movie star Jackson Sharpe? He’s one of the few actors I actually respect.”
“I’ll tell him you said so. Or you could come along and tell him yourself.”
In Anna Percy’s seventeen years and eight months on the planet, she’d done things that most girls could only dream of. Chatted with royalty at Wimbledon. Sat next to Christina Onassis at a fund-raiser for the Whitney. Met with the president’s daughter at a symposium on high school students and geopolitics. But it all paled in comparison to the prospect of attending Jackson Sharpe’s wedding on the arm of Ben Birnbaum, as the new Anna Percy.
So she said yes.
Two
11:47 A.M., PST
“Are you sure I can’t give you a ride?” Ben asked again as he retrieved the last of Anna’s Louis Vuitton signature bags from the luggage carousel. “I was just going to catch a cab.”
“My father said he’d meet me—I’m sure he’ll be here any minute.” Anna was feeling somewhat self-conscious. She’d downed two cups of black coffee before they’d landed. Now, back on terra firma and in the vicinity of sober, what had happened on the plane with Ben seemed even more like an out-of-body experience. Except that the thought of it gave her a very in-body instant replay.
He hoisted his Lambertson Truex leather duffel bag over his shoulder. “Well, I’m not heading out until I’m sure he actually—”
“Excuse me, Miss Percy?”
Anna turned to see a tall, loose-limbed young man with platinum hair and an inch of dark roots, dressed in a bad black suit and wrinkled white shirt. He had silver rings on almost every finger, including his left thumb.
“Yes, I’m Anna.”
“Hey. I’m Django Simms, your dad’s assistant,” he said in a honeyed southern drawl, holding out his large hand for a firm handshake. “Call me Django. Your father showed me your photo; that’s how I recognized you. Sorry I’m late. Traffic on the 405 was a bitch and a half.”
“No problem,” Anna assured him. She quickly introduced Ben.
“Your dad didn’t mention you were comin’ with your boyfriend,” Django declared as he flagged down a porter for Anna’s bags.
“Oh no, Ben’s not—I mean …,” Anna stammered. “We just met.”
“Oh. Lucky guy.” Django’s eyes flicked over Ben.
“Where’s my father?”
“He said to tell you he was unavoidably detained, and he’s real sorry.”
“I see.” Anna’s shoulders tightened. Her father had promised he’d be at the airport. Which meant he was already up to his old habits: breaking promises as quickly as he made them.
“I’ll have the porter bring your stuff out to the car; then I’ll pick you up,” Django said. “Work for you?”
“Fine,” Anna replied. “Thanks.”
“No prob.” Django tipped a nonexistent hat in Ben’s direction and then strode off with the porter toward the exit doors.
Ben scowled. “There’s something about that guy.”
Wow, was Ben jealous of Django or something?
Anna knew it was childish, but she hoped he was. “Well, Ben. This has been quite an unusual trip.”
“Unforgettable. So. I’ll pick you up at five o’clock?”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“Me too.” He kissed her lightly on the lips, and then he and Anna took off in separate directions. Anna turned to watch him, walking poetry in a weathered leather bomber jacket.
Once she stepped outside, the intense sunshine was nearly blinding; she reached for her classic Dakota Smith sunglasses. It felt unnatural, in a way, being the last day of December. She started to perspire and realized that the temperature had to be close to eighty degrees. Up ahead Django hopped out of a BMW, waving to her. She strode over to him quickly, and he held the rear door open for her.
“Sorry to rush you, but they don’t like cars to stand here for more than fifteen seconds at a time.” He slid into the driver’s seat and inched the car out into the thick airport traffic. “Your dad really was sorry not to meet you.”
“I understand,” Anna said, even though she really didn’t. She hadn’t seen her father in more than a year. And though she knew how busy he was with his investment firm, it still hurt her feelings that he couldn’t take an hour off to meet her plane.
“So the plan is we’ll drop your bags off at the house, then you’re meetin’ him for lunch at Heaven,” Django continued. “In Beverly Hills. To celebrate your arrival.”
Anna had never heard of Heaven. In the larger sense—heaven, hell, all that—she wasn’t sure whether or not she believed that such a place existed. But if it did, she was certain that heaven did not exist in Beverly Hills. Well, at least they weren’t having lunch at Spago (which was post-hip) or Buffalo Club in Santa Monica (recently written about in The New York Times as the hippest of the hip, meaning that it was on the road to being post-hip), or some trendy, overpriced sushi restaurant (she never could get used to eating bait). Frankly, Anna would have preferred a nameless sidewalk café or, better yet, a melted cheese sandwich at home with her shoes kicked off, followed by a short nap and a long bubble bath before her date with Ben.
“So, how long will your visit be?” Django asked as he pulled onto the freeway. Evidently her father had neglected to inform his assistant that she was actually going to live there.
“I’m not sure yet,” Anna replied.
“I could arrange some sightseeing—”
“Oh, that’s not necessary, but thank you.”
“Well, if you change your mind …”
Anna nodded. It seemed odd to be riding alone in the backseat while a very cute guy who didn’t look to be much older than she was drove alone in the front seat. Over the years, the mean age of her mother’s drivers had edged somewhat north of fifty. Not that Jane Cabot Percy would ever have considered a driver with a spiked blond hairdo, no matter how old he was.
“Music?” Django asked.
“Sure, fine.” She expected he’d put on something headbanging. But instead, the cool sounds of a solo jazz pianist filled the interior of the BMW. Anna leaned back in the tan leather seat. As she took in the palm trees, the cloudless sky, and the brilliant sunshine, she let the music carry her away.
“Ma’am? Miss Percy? Anna?”
Anna’s bleary eyes flicked open. Django was twisted around in his seat, gently calling to her. The car had stopped. She felt totally disoriented. “What?” she croaked.
“Sorry to wake you. But we’re here.”
They were parked in the circular driveway of her father’s house, on the corner of Elevado Avenue and North Foothill Drive. Her bags were already in front of the double white front doors.
“I guess I fell asleep,” Anna said, yawning.
“Did you want to go in and freshen up before I take you to meet your dad? I was supposed to have you at Heaven ten minutes ago, though.”
“I’m okay,” Anna assured him, getting out and stretching.
“If you’re sure …”
“I’ll be fine. After a cup of coffee.”
“Well, let me tell Mina to put your things away. That okay?”
“Mina?”
“One of the housekeepers.”
“Oh, sure. Fine,” Anna agreed. “Thanks.”
The elegant house, built by Anna’s grandparents in the 1950s, looked exactly as she remembered it from her last visit. It was massive, white stucco with red shutters, shaded by giant palm and eucalyptus trees. Crimson, pink, purple, and lavender flowers lined the path to the front door. The property was enclosed by shrubbery so tall and thick that it served the same purpose as a privacy fence.
Two years ago, Anna recalled, her grandparents had decided to retire to their golf course home in Palm Springs. So Anna’s father had moved from his Wilshire Boulevard high-rise condo into the family homestead.
As Django disappeared into the house with her luggage, Anna brushed her hair a
nd popped a Hint Mint. She was replacing her lip gloss when Django loped back toward the car. Anna got a really good look at him. He had intense eyes, chiseled cheekbones, and the insouciant gait of a guy who knew he was hot. He managed to make his cheap black chauffeur’s uniform look casual and hip.
Django slid back into the driver’s seat. “Ready to rock ’n’ roll?”
“Hold on a sec.” Anna got out of the car, opened the door on the passenger’s side, and got in next to Django. “Much better.”
He gave her a bemused look. “You fraternizin’ with the help?”
“I just felt ridiculous sitting back there all by myself. Unless you mind—”
“Ma’am, any guy who’d mind having a beautiful girl like you sit next to him is deaf, dumb, and blind times ten.” He pulled the BMW out of the driveway.
“You have to stop calling me ma’am,” Anna insisted. “It makes me want to look around for my mother.”
“Sorry. Where I come from, women like it.”
“Where is that?”
“Boonietown, Mississippi—you might have heard of it?”
It took Anna a beat before she burst out laughing. Then Django laughed, too. “Seriously. Where?”
“That was long ago and far away,” Django said. A blonde in a red Viper convertible behind them honked impatiently with her free hand—the one not grasping her cell phone—then zoomed around them. He shook his head. “Everyone in this town wants everything to happen yesterday.”
As he powered down Santa Monica Boulevard, he popped the CD out of the CD player and handed it to Anna. “A gift. My demo.”
Anna was astonished. “That was you on the piano?”
“Yeah.”
“It was wonderful. Did you come out here to try and get signed to a record contract?”
“You think I’m like everyone else here?” Django quipped. “Chasin’ some fool dream?”
Anna shook her head. “I don’t understand why someone who can play the piano like that would be my father’s assistant.”
Django didn’t offer to explain, so Anna dropped it. Ten minutes later he pulled the car up outside of Heaven, a restaurant supposedly so hip it bore no sign. You just had to know. A valet opened the passenger door for Anna. “Want me to wait?” Django called.