by Zoey Dean
“No, that’s fine.”
“Well, have fun, then. Try to, anyway. Oh, hold up a sec.” Django pulled a small business card from his pocket and handed it to Anna. “In case you ever need me. For a ride. Or anything.”
His “anything” had an interesting spin to it. In the past she would have dismissed him as “the driver,” no matter how cute he was. That, Anna decided, was an attitude that definitely needed adjusting.
She gave him what she hoped was a dazzling smile. “Thanks. And thanks for the CD, too.” Then she slipped his card into her wallet and headed into the restaurant.
Three
12:43 P.M., PST
The first thing Anna noted about Heaven was that, appropriately enough, everything was white. The walls. The suede banquettes. The curtains that separated the we’re-so-famous-we-don’t-want-you-to-bother-us tables from the others. It wasn’t lost on Anna that the curtains were actually transparent, so the we’re-so-famous could pretend they didn’t want to be stared at while at the same time allowing the world to ogle.
And that, Anna thought, was just so L.A.
She sat solo at a table for two, awaiting her father. Thirty minutes and two cups of black coffee later, she was still solo. She began making a mental list of reasons her father might be unavoidably detained. But she knew her father had her cell number. Why hadn’t he called?
“Miss, would you like to order while you’re waiting for your companion?”
Anna blinked at the gorgeous white sari–clad waitress, who stood by expectantly with a white pencil and white pad. What the hell. She couldn’t very well live on bile. She inquired as to the possibility of a grilled cheese sandwich. When the waitress blanched, she changed her order to a grilled mahi sandwich and decided that if her father didn’t arrive by the time her sandwich did, she’d ask the maitre d’ to call her a taxi.
She checked her watch again. Forty minutes. All around her people with the sheen of “I’m too cool to eat behind the curtains” were chattering away. She was the only person dining alone. She wondered if she looked confident and mysterious. Doubtful. She probably looked like what she was: a girl who’d been stood up.
“Your lunch.” The waitress set down her sandwich, which was adorned with white bean sprouts and a single slice of organic tomato. “Can I get you anything else?”
Anna stared at her sandwich and couldn’t bear the thought of eating it alone. Instead she asked for the check as the waitress frowned at the untouched lunch. Was it not to her liking? Anna had to assure her three times that she was fine, the food was fine, and, in fact, life in general was just fine, fine, fine. Evidently in Los Angeles people expected you to be as serene and sunny as the weather. In New York you could wallow in existential angst whenever you felt like it, and constant cheerfulness would only make people suspect that you were brain damaged.
Anna asked the waitress to wrap her lunch to go—perhaps her father would want dead fish. That was, if she ever found her father. The waitress whisked Anna’s platinum AmEx card away and returned with the check for her signature. At that moment Anna looked through the floor-to-ceiling window and saw a disheveled older man in a baseball cap—obviously homeless—shuffling down the street. Impulsively, she grabbed her untouched lunch and rushed out onto Wilshire Boulevard, looking for the homeless man. She didn’t see him, just ultrathin women and gym-obsessed men, all walking like they had someplace crucial to be.
“Hey! You look like a beautiful woman who needs a ride.”
Anna’s father’s car was curbside, Django leaning out the passenger window, grinning behind his aviator-style Ray-Bans.
“How did you get here?”
“Came back to wait on you. You lookin’ for the bum?”
Suddenly Anna felt ridiculous. “I wanted to give him my lunch.”
Django cocked his head to the east. “He just walked into the Barnes and Noble on the corner. In this town you can’t tell the bums from the writers.”
Anna climbed into the front seat and put the sandwich on the dashboard as Django started the car. “My father never showed up.”
“I know. He sent me to fetch you.”
An ache clenched Anna’s throat. Her father kept sending people for her but somehow couldn’t manage to show up himself.
“He’s home,” Django went on.
“And very busy,” Anna filled in, her voice tight again.
Django scratched his chin. “Uh … I’m supposed to tell you somethin’ about an investor’s call from Hawaii he had to take.”
Anna swallowed hard. One of the reasons that her mother always gave for the end of her marriage was that her father was “too driven.” And here he was, proving it true once again. Well, this disappointment was between her and her father. She’d grown up with the credo that family laundry did not get aired in public … and certainly not with the chauffeur.
A few minutes later Django dropped her off with a cocky grin and a casual salute. “Take it easy, Anna.” He made that little hat-tipping gesture again before he drove off.
Anna rang repeatedly before a shapely young housekeeper with hair a shade of red not found in nature came to the door. She couldn’t have been a day over twenty-one. “Hello, I’m—”
“I know who you are.” The housekeeper let Anna into the cool stone foyer. When she pivoted off, Anna noticed that she was wearing high heels with her short uniform.
“Excuse me,” Anna called after her. “Do you have a name?”
“Inga,” the girl said sullenly.
“Thank you, Inga. Do you know where my father is?”
The young woman shrugged. “I saw him a little while ago. Now, I don’t know. Maybe he went out.”
Anna tried to hide her irritation, which was mixed with hurt. “How about my room? Do you know where that is?”
“Upstairs. Last one on the right. Mina put your stuff away.” She pointed up the circular staircase at the end of the hall and then turned away.
“Thank her for me. Look, do you happen to know if my father—”
Inga returned to whatever she was doing, and Anna found herself talking to Inga’s disappearing backside. She checked the entire ground floor for her dad but only encountered a cook and yet another housekeeper in the kitchen, smoking cigarettes and watching a Spanish telenovella. Neither paid her any attention, so she went upstairs and checked all seven bedrooms. Nothing. Great. Just great.
Anna wandered back to her own room. A handmade silk quilt in shades of pink lay across the oak canopy bed. The hardwood floor gleamed beneath tapestry rugs with hand-knotted edges. Anna found her clothes unpacked in an antique armoire scented with a lavender sachet, her sweaters and underwear folded in the dresser drawers. Each drawer had been scattered with rose petals. There were fresh flowers in a crystal vase on a small table by the picture window and an antique chaise longue. It was really everything a girl could want. That is, if what a girl really wanted was anything other than her father.
Just as Anna was about to kick off her shoes and curl up for a quick nap, there was a perfunctory knock on the door, which opened immediately. Inga stuck her head into Anna’s room.
“Try the gazebo.” Then the door slammed shut.
The gazebo. Her grandparents’ house had been built on something that was a rarity in Beverly Hills: a sizable plot of land. There were two acres of landscaped grounds, with a guest house, an artificial stream and small foot-bridge, a swimming pool, and a lighted paddle-tennis court. In the middle of these grounds, directly under a huge eucalyptus tree, was a New England-style gazebo large enough to seat twenty people.
Anna trudged out the back door and followed the flagstone path that led to the gazebo. The first thing she saw, standing proudly on the floor, was a five-foot-high sculpture of Cupid. His quiver was full, and he held an arrow drawn back, ready to be shot.
The second thing she saw was her father, sprawled on the wooden slats at Cupid’s feet. She gasped, afraid for an instant that he was dead. Or, at the least, very s
ick.
Then she heard him snore. Loudly. Was he drunk? To the best of her knowledge, Susan was the only one in the family with an alcohol problem. There was a strange odor she couldn’t place. No, wait—it was kind of sweet and skunky, and it made her feel a little light-headed—of course she could place it. Marijuana. Now she noticed the partially smoked joint inches from his outstretched right hand. Judging from how little had been consumed, it would appear her father had gained access to what Rick Resnick, that loser from the plane, would certainly term “primo shit.” Not that Anna actually knew what “primo shit” was. Other than alcohol, she’d never ingested a mood-altering substance in her life.
For several long moments Anna just stood there. Her father was a man who had his suits custom-made in London, and she knew he had a taste for Armagnac, but only as a drink to nurse after dinner. If someone had told her that she’d find her father passed out on the floor with a blunt, she’d have laughed.
Yet there it was. There he was. He was in his early forties, tall and lean. Though his eyes were closed at the moment, Anna knew them to be a startling blue against his perpetually tanned face. He had a new, spiky haircut and a day’s worth of stubble on his cheeks. Even in his disheveled state, he looked easily ten years younger than he was. Anna shook her father’s shoulder hard. “Dad. Dad!”
He snorted awake and sat bolt upright, blinking until he could focus on his daughter. “Anna?”
“Right on the first guess.”
“Hey …” He leaned against Cupid, rubbing his face. “What time is it?”
Unbelievable. Anna glared at him. “Past the time you said you’d meet my plane. And past the time you said you’d meet me for lunch.”
“Oh, man.” He ran a hand over his face. “I messed up. I’m so sorry, honey.” He stood up and hugged her. She barely hugged him back.
“Uh-oh. You’re mad. Cut me some slack, okay? I’ve been getting these bitchin’ headaches and the only thing that helps is weed. I guess it knocked me out.”
Anna’s anger instantly morphed into concern. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“Doctors.” He made a dismissive gesture with his hand and sat on the filigreed iron bench, patting the space next to him so that Anna would sit, too. “I’ve got a killer herbalist in Topanga Canyon. So, how are you?”
“Fine.” It was the automatic answer she always gave him.
“You look great. How’s your sister?”
“She’s back in rehab. I told you on the phone,” she reminded him. Fear clutched Anna’s stomach. He was acting so bizarrely. She knew her father to be an organized, PalmPilot man whose idea of casual was a three-ply cashmere sweater. But here he was, in jeans and a grungy T-shirt, using profanity. What if he really was sick? What if he had a brain tumor or some kind of weird, early-onset Alzheimer’s?
“If you’re getting bad headaches, you really should see a doctor, Dad.”
“Hey, don’t you think it’s about time you started calling me Jonathan?”
“Why?” Anna asked, trying to mask how totally freaked she was by her father’s transformation.
“You’re all grown up, that’s why. I always wanted to call my parents by their first names, but it wigged ’em out. Hey, that really sucks about Susan.”
“That really sucks about Susan?” Don’t get too worked up over it, Dad—it was only a near overdose—not like she died or anything.
“Fine. Jonathan,” Anna snapped.
Her father stood and stretched. “Let’s get Teresa to rustle us up some lunch, huh?” he suggested. “She’s a monster cook.”
Anna agreed. And while part of her wanted to run away and pretend this encounter had never occurred, the other part of her still hadn’t eaten all day and was starving. And maybe everything her father had said was the truth. She’d read how marijuana helped ease the symptoms of some illnesses, so why not give her father the benefit of the doubt?
As they strolled back toward the house, her father asked all about Anna’s life: school, guys, et cetera. She gave her usual polite and obligatory answers. Then he asked about the subject that always seemed to interest him the most: his ex-wife.
“She’s how she always is,” Anna tried to remind him as they went in the back door.
“Still the Ice Maid of the Upper East Side?”
“At the moment she’s in Venice, thawing out.”
Her father’s face lit up. “No shit? She decided to come here with you?”
It took a beat for Anna to realize that her father was thinking of the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice, south of Santa Monica, by the ocean. “Venice, Italy,” Anna explained.
“Right. Shoulda known. Your mother wouldn’t be caught dead in Venice. Way too funky for her.” He sounded disappointed. They went into the kitchen; her father asked the older woman to fix them some food. She rose wordlessly, her eyes still glued to her soap opera.
A few moments later they were in the formal dining room, eating blue corn tortilla chips and homemade tomato-and-cilantro salsa and avocado-and-chicken-breast sandwiches. Anna told her father about that evening’s date with Ben, omitting the story of how she’d met him. Then she wiped her mouth and set the perfectly ironed linen napkin next to her plate. “That was delicious. I think I’ll take a nap before I get ready. What are you doing to ring in the New Year, Dad?”
He wagged a finger at her. “Jonathan. I’m low-keying it this year. Hanging out with a friend, that’s all.”
Anna went upstairs and gazed out her window, which faced the backyard. She hadn’t been there for more than about five seconds when she saw her father head back toward the gazebo. And then she remembered: He’d left behind that fatty he’d been smoking.
Four
12:43 P.M., PST
Seventeen-year-old Samantha Sharpe, daughter of America’s favorite movie star, Jackson Sharpe, was having a really bad day. She was in her bedroom suite (approximately the same size as a small ranch house in, say, Van Nuys), on the second floor of her father’s palatial Bel Air estate (a mile, several thousand square feet, and a couple of zeros north of Jonathan Percy’s mansion). She wore a silk robe over a black strapless bra and boy-cut lace panties. At the moment, most of the suite’s twelve hundred square feet were covered in cocktail dress couture.
In exactly six hours and twenty-seven minutes, her father would be marrying a pregnant ingénue bimbo named Poppy Sinclair. Everyone who was anyone would be there. Photos of the nuptial extravaganza would run in every media market around the world. And Sam Sharpe still didn’t have a thing to wear.
To the reception, that is.
For the ceremony she’d be poured into a hideous gold silk charmeuse bridesmaid’s gown designed by Donatella as a “personal favor” to Poppy and Jackson. As soon as the ceremony was over, Sam planned to change into something stunning. And, hopefully, flattering.
She’d chosen her après-ceremony dress weeks ago—a wicked Stella McCartney number in powder-blue velvet. But when she’d tried it on last night, she’d realized that it made her look like a fat pig. Why hadn’t any of the so-called friends who’d shopped with her said anything? She’d end up a laughingstock in People, for chrissake. No, worse—she’d be the “What Was She Thinking?” fashion victim of the week in Star.
Well, that was not going to happen. Even though the photos would undoubtedly last longer than the actual marriage. She was not going to be caught for posterity looking like Kelly Osbourne in one of those god-awful velvet paintings they sold on the beach. What good were money and power if you didn’t put them to good use?
So, the evening before, she’d called Fleur Abra, the wedding planner, and asked if she would be so kind as to call the design houses and have them send over some alternative dresses for the wedding reception. And presto—just like that—Sam’s bedroom had been transformed into a multidesigner trunk show. Size eight, she told Fleur. Nothing conservative, and nothing in the earth colors that made her brown hair/brown eyes/yellow-undertone skin look jaundiced.
She held up a deconstructed pinstripe mess from Anne Valérie Hash to the mirror and checked out the reflection. It looked like it should be titled “When Business Suits Go Bad.” Who had decided Anne Valérie was the new It designer, anyway?
Those were just the dresses that fit. In the couldn’t-zip-it-up-if-her-life-depended-on-it pile were two Marc Jacobses, a Galliano, an Oscar de la Renta, a red Alexander McQueen, a lace Dior, and a drop-waisted Prada.
Behind her, atop her bed, were the potential accessories for the evening: a dozen assorted purses (all so tiny that she couldn’t fit inside more than a lip gloss, her Valium prescription, and a condom; fortunately, that was all she ever needed to carry in an evening purse). There was also an array of jewelry from Harry Winston. The jewelry was hers; her father took her there to shop twice a year, on her birthday and Christmas. (Actually, his assistant took her.) And at the foot of the bed were towering heels by Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, and Pierre Hardy, lined up like gay soldiers on parade.
Since the items had come from several stores, each had sent a designer’s assistant to help Sam with the selection process. At the moment these assistants were hovering around Sam like feeding hummingbirds, hoping that one of the girl’s pudgy fingers would extend toward their dress, shoes, and/or bag, followed by the magic words “That one is perfect.”
And why not? One photo in a major magazine of Sam Sharpe wearing their fashion could translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales.