by Zoey Dean
Dee and Giovanni wandered back in and informed Sam that Nude Dude was still breathing. They shared an apple martini. Then Dee stripped off her clothes, made a mad dash for the indoor pool, and jumped in. Giovanni dropped trou and followed her.
Sam couldn’t help but admire Giovanni’s impressive physique. But it still didn’t tempt her.
Skye squealed as she bobbed underneath the manmade waterfall at the shallow end of the Olympic-size pool. Damian jumped in after her. En masse, the others shed their clothes and jumped in, too. Sam did what she always did—kept her underwear on. (Drunk as she might be, Sam wasn’t about to shock her friends into sobriety with a glimpse of her full-mooned ass, where-upon she imagined they’d all scream and go running off into the night like in some kind of Freddy Krueger retro-horror flick. If that happened, she’d never be able to come out before dark in Beverly Hills again.)
Nearby, Dee seemed to have dropped Giovanni in favor of Parker—they were playing some kind of “gotcha” game under the water. Giovanni seemed to be paying a little too much attention to Damian. Sam floated on her back, feeling removed from the debauchery that surrounded her. This was not at all how she’d planned to spend this evening. How many times could you get wasted and make out with some guy you didn’t really care about who didn’t really care about you, either?
“Does sperm float?” Skye asked Sam, suddenly looming over her.
Sam planted her feet on the bottom of the pool. The water came up to her shoulders. “Why?”
Skye cocked her chin; Sam’s eyes followed. Dee and Parker, of all people, were furiously making out in the shallow end.
Skye had come to the wedding with Parker. “Are you pissed?” Sam asked.
“Please.” Skye yawned ostentatiously. “I think I’ll try going gay. Guys are such shits.”
Sam got out of the pool and padded into one of the heated cabanas to towel off. She wrapped herself in the cashmere robe that hung on a door hook for guests and then came out, towel-drying her hair.
“Hey, Sam.” Adam loped over to her. He was completely dressed. “Listen, killer party. Thanks for the invite.”
“You can stay over. Everyone else will.”
“Thanks,” Adam said. “But my parents are going to freak as it is.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s past three already.”
“You’re so good,” Sam teased.
“Nah.” Adam brought his face close to Sam’s and whispered, “Hey, you okay? About before?”
About before? “Sure,” Sam replied, even though she didn’t have a clue as to what he was referring to.
“Kissing you was great, Sam,” he said, his voice low so that he wouldn’t be overheard. “Just wanted to tell you.”
That was what he was talking about? Adam had to be the nicest, sweetest guy on the planet. So why couldn’t she feel about him the way she felt about Ben?
“Thanks, Adam.” She kissed him on the cheek.
“Hey, if you need me to come help you clean up tomorrow—”
“This is why God invented cleaning services,” Sam said. “But thanks for offering.”
Adam laughed self-consciously. “Oh yeah. Sometimes I forget. At our house I’m the cleaning service. So, see ya.” He took off.
Sam walked over to a glass wall and looked at the glittering lights of Tinseltown. Soon it would be the first light of the New Year. Ben was out there somewhere, with someone else. Sam didn’t have him. And neither did Cammie, who, for some mysterious reason, had stayed at the Warner Brothers party instead of coming over to Sam’s.
No, they were both shit out of luck. Ben was with Anna. They were probably making love at that exact moment for about the tenth time. Suddenly Sam was overcome with a wish to actually be Anna.
But even with all of Sam’s money and power, that was one wish she couldn’t make come true.
Nineteen
2:51 A.M., PST
“Here lies Anna Percy, who died with her virginity intact.” Anna pulled the quilt over her face so that she wouldn’t have to see Ben’s reaction.
“Anna, it’s okay. I told you.” Ben gently tugged the quilt off her face. Propped up on one elbow, he looked down at her. “If you’re not ready—”
“It’s not that I’m not ready. I mean, my body is ready.” She puffed air between her lips. “God, this is going to sound like such a cliché: We just met. And I always imagined that the first time would be … not that this isn’t special, because it is; it’s just …”
Ben smiled tenderly. “The articulate Miss Percy is at a loss for words. Well, that has to count for something.” He kissed Anna on the forehead. “Look, I’m a big boy. I’m not going to spontaneously combust just because we didn’t do what we almost did. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“But when you’re ready, I’m ready.”
“Okay.”
He nodded, waiting a long beat. “Ready now?”
Anna burst out laughing and bopped him with the pillow. He bopped her back, then threw the pillow down to the end of the bed and kissed her softly. “No need for you to get up yet. I’ll go up top and head us back to the marina.”
Ben got up and unselfconsciously put his clothes back on. Anna couldn’t help but admire his body. She watched as he loped up the steps and out of the cabin, then nuzzled under the quilt and pondered what had almost been.
She’d been so sure that this was the boy and the moment. And then, just as push came to shove, so to speak, she’d stopped him. Something in her gut told her this: If Ben was The One, it was worth waiting for, and if it turned out he wasn’t, then she’d be very glad that she hadn’t succumbed to the lust of the moment.
Or was that horribly old-fashioned? Sometimes Anna’s own longing for romantic love embarrassed her. Perhaps it was reading all those nineteenth-century British novels in middle school. After she was supposed to be asleep, she used to sneak a flashlight under the covers and read until her eyes burned with exhaustion. When she fell asleep, she’d dream that she was Elizabeth Bennet, pining for her own Mr. Darcy, convention be damned.
But all that was so passé. None of the girls she knew attached much feeling to love. It was all about “hooking up.” How she felt was probably ridiculous and infantile. It certainly didn’t fit in with her concept of the new, improved Anna. But she couldn’t help it. She’d heard so many horror stories about first sexual experiences, it made her wary.
Her sister, Susan, for example: She’d been in East Hampton at the mansion of a composer who had been deported for importing cocaine from his native Bolivia. The mansion had been left to his ex-wife. The ex-wife often encouraged her teenage son to invite his friends to swim in their pool. Then she’d select a boy for a guided tour of a lot more than her home.
Even at age fourteen, Susan’s drinking problem had already been in full, albeit secret, swing. The divorcée’s bar was always stocked with iced Stoli. Feeling no pain one afternoon, Susan had shed both her bikini and her virginity with one of the boys the divorcée had passed over. In other words, her sister had been the consolation prize.
Recalling that story made Anna want to cry; she made a mental note to call Susan first thing in the morning. Maybe Susan’s horror story had made her even more skittish; she wasn’t sure. As Anna lay there, she had no idea whether or not she’d done the right thing. Part of her wished Ben would come running down the stairs and take her into his arms, whereupon she’d be swept away by a passion she’d be unable to resist. And part of her … well … didn’t.
Anna sank against the pillows and closed her eyes. Up top, she could hear Ben puttering around, swabbing the deck and replacing the tarpaulins he’d removed before. It was such a comfortable bed, the silk sheets, the down comforter, the gentle rocking of the boat. And she was so tired. …
“Hey, sleepyhead.”
Anna opened her eyes. It took her a moment to recall where she was and why. “I guess I fell asleep,” she said groggily. “What time is it?”
“Around three. I hate t
o wake you, but I’m going to get the car and bring it over the slip. You get dressed; I’ll come back and get you.”
“It won’t take me long to dress,” Anna protested. “I can come with you.”
Ben grinned. “Nah. Take your time. I like to think of you in here, looking like you look right now. Back in a flash.”
Anna got up, washed as best she could in the cabin’s small basin, and quickly dressed. She felt slightly ridiculous as she pulled back on the vinyl pants, silk chemise, and Ben’s tuxedo jacket. She shivered. Ben was right. It had gotten cold. And she didn’t feel like searching for a fleece jacket. She decided to crawl back under the covers and wait for Ben to return with the car.
She awoke with a start. How long had she been asleep?
“Ben?”
No answer.
“Ben?” Louder this time.
Still no answer. She got out of bed and went up top.
“Ben! Where are you?” Up on the deck, she could read her watch. The time made her stomach lurch. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. Ben had departed for the car a little after three. So where was he?
“Ben!” Her voice echoed across the deserted marina.
“Shut the hell up, we’re trying to sleep!” someone bellowed from another boat.
Anna climbed off the Nip-n-Tuck and onto the dock, her heart racing. She jogged along the wooden dock, heading toward the main part of the marina. Where had they parked? Why hadn’t she paid more attention? Thoughts of what could have happened to Ben slammed through her head at breakneck speed. He’d had an accident, hit his head and fallen in the water. He’d been kidnapped. He’d—
She stopped. There was the sign for Joe’s Clam restaurant, with the arrow pointing toward the bar. It was the only sign like it. This was where they had parked. But the area was now deserted. No Maserati convertible. Just black asphalt and two white painted lines that framed the awful truth.
Could everything he’d told her have been a lie, an elaborate game to get into her pants? Or was he just really pissed off—after all the time he’d invested—that she hadn’t put out? Pissed off enough to simply ditch her, all alone at a marina at four o’clock in the morning?
Oh my God. Would he really do something like that?
She didn’t know. She couldn’t think straight.
All she knew was this: Ben was gone.
Twenty
4:29 A.M., PST
Anna leaned wearily against the Joe’s Clam sign. Her shoulders sagged; she felt like crying. But even though Ben wasn’t around to see her despair, she refused to give the bastard that satisfaction. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around what he’d done to her. It was just so calculated.
To think that, just an hour or so ago she’d been feeling sorry for the pathetic way Susan had lost her virginity. Now her own story struck her as even more pitiful. So she hadn’t actually had sex with Ben, so what? She’d believed every lie he’d fed her. At least Susan had had no illusion that she cared about the boy involved or that he cared about her. But Anna had really thought that she and Ben were…
Goddamn him. Goddamn him to hell. What had made him think that she’d fall into bed with him? Or devise his elaborate lure to have her fall for him?
“Gee, do you think it might have been the fact that you practically did it with him on an airplane an hour after you met him?” she asked herself aloud.
She felt nauseated. How, how could she have been so stupid? Something had to be seriously wrong with her. First she fell for Scott Spencer, a guy who didn’t even seem to recognize that she was an anatomically correct female. Then she fell for Ben Birnbaum, a guy who lied his ass off just to get into her faux leopard pants.
Anna looked around the deserted parking lot, which made her New York instincts kick in. Not a good place for a girl to be alone. She knew she had to do something—but what? Call her father? That was laughable. The man couldn’t make it to the airport or to lunch, so it wasn’t very likely that he’d come halfway across the city to fetch her in the middle of the night. Besides, she’d have to explain what she was doing at the marina at four o’clock in the morning. Alone.
She could call a cab. But there was something sordid about taxiing home in her stupid hooker outfit at the end of the world’s worst New Year’s Eve. Still, what option did she have?
And then she remembered her father’s driver. Django. He’d given her his business card. She’d put it in her wallet. So maybe she still…
She rummaged around in her Chanel clutch. There it was. She punched his number into her cell. It rang and rang.
“Yeah?” came a groggy male voice.
“Django? I’m so sorry to wake you. It’s Anna.”
“Anna …” Her name was said as if he were rifling through a mental Rolodex. “Oh, Anna! Hey! Happy New Year. What’s up?”
“I know it’s very late. The thing is … I’m in Marina del Rey. Near Joe’s Clam bar. And … I need a ride home. I know it’s a lot to ask; I can call a taxi if—”
“Anna,” he interrupted.
“Yes?”
“I’m already there.”
Anna sat in the front seat of Django’s old Nissan Sentra as he powered the car down the nearly empty streets, staying alert for drunken revelers. Thankfully, he hadn’t commented on her stupid outfit. Nor had he tried to make small talk or even asked what she was doing alone in the marina at four in the morning. He’d just played one of his jazz CDs and kept his mouth shut, two things for which Anna was very grateful.
They turned off Santa Monica Boulevard onto North Foothill Drive. Anna faced him. “I want to thank you for doing this.”
“Don’t give it no nevermind,” he drawled.
“I hope you don’t have a long drive home from here.”
He turned up her father’s driveway. “Nope. I live close.”
“Oh. That’s good.”
“Right there, actually.” He pointed past the main house to the guest house out back. When Anna was little, her grandmother had let her use that house as a life-size domicile for her dolls. But she hadn’t been inside it in years.
So her father’s chauffeur lived on the premises. It struck her as odd, but she was too tired to care. She rubbed her pounding temples. “I feel like I’ve spent the last twenty hours going the wrong way through the looking glass.”
“Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.” He shut down the car, got out, and came around to open Anna’s door for her. As she swung her legs out, her knee bumped the glove compartment. It sprang open. A jumble of CDs, photos, and papers fell onto her lap and then tumbled to the floor.
“I’m so sorry. I must really be exhausted,” Anna said as she gathered the things up.
“No, I’ll get them—”
“I don’t mind—”
“I said, I’ll get it.”
Something in Django’s tone made Anna step away from the car and let him retrieve the fallen things. But she was still holding the one thing she had settled on her lap, an old photograph. As Django rooted around on the car floor, Anna looked at the picture. It featured a little boy with dark hair, standing by a grand piano. There was a full adult orchestra behind him; a tall, silver-haired conductor stood next to the boy, one arm proudly around him. The boy and the conductor were both in black tie.
Anna drew in a quick breath when she recognized the conductor, one of the most famous conductors and composers of the late twentieth century. He was beaming at the boy, who was obviously being wildly applauded by both audience and orchestra.
Anna looked from the photograph to Django, who was still retrieving things from the floor. There was no doubt: Anna could see the boy in the man. It was Django. But when she wordlessly handed him the photo, her eyes betrayed nothing.
Everyone has secrets, she thought. No one ever really knows anyone.
Django stuffed his papers back in the glove compartment and slammed it shut. “Got everything now?”
“Yes. Thank you, Djang
o. More than you know. I had the ultimate squished-bug kind of night.”
Django scratched his stubbly chin. “Would you buy it if I told you that it’s always darkest before the dawn? Or that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel? Course there’s always a possibility that it’s an oncoming train. But still.”
She mustered a smile. “Thank you for trying to cheer me up. Thank you for everything. Really. You’re a gentleman and a scholar.”
He nodded, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and headed for the guest house. Then spun back to her. “Spain. Chick Corea.”
“Pardon?”
“When I feel like I’m peelin’ myself off the windshield, that’s what I listen to. If you want to borrow the CD, drop by. Anytime. ’Night.” Django doffed his imaginary hat and strode off.
Anna watched him depart, then went to the front door and opened it, thinking how good it would be to get horizontal … alone. And to shower. A really, really hot shower to wash away any memory of Ben Birnbaum.
She stepped into the pitch-black foyer.
A woman screamed.
Anna jumped back instinctively, her arm sweeping against the Ming vase on the small armoire near the door. It crashed to the marble-tiled floor.
The foyer light snapped on. A barefoot blonde in a blue silk robe was carrying a plate of crème brûlée cookies from Spago—Anna knew what they were because her dad sent her a pound of them every year on her birthday—they were his favorite dessert in the world. That Anna found them too rich seemed to be completely lost on him.
“What the hell was that?” Anna’s father came out of his bedroom, shirtless and in pajama bottoms. He made it halfway down the stairs before he took in the tableau in the hallway. “Well. That’s not exactly the way I’d planned to have you two meet.”
“I’m sorry,” the blonde told Anna. “You startled me.”
Anna was more than startled. Not so much that this woman was obviously her father’s significant other (at least for the evening), but rather because instead of what Anna might have expected—some early-twenties, over-the-top Maxim babe with pneumatic body parts that could double as flotation devices—this woman was tall, angular, and very thin. With the same understated blond beauty and patrician features as Anna’s mother.