by Zoey Dean
“It’s okay, Margaret, it’s my daughter,” Jonathan Percy called out as he came the rest of the way downstairs.
“Yes, I gathered that,” the woman said. She put the plate of cookies on the armoire. “Hello. I’m Margaret Cunningham. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Your father has told me so much about you.”
Okay, this was deeply bizarre. The closer Anna got, the more this woman looked like Jane Percy’s doppelganger. But Anna’s good manners automatically kicked in, and she took the woman’s hand. “Happy New Year, Margaret.”
“So, you two.” Her father’s voice was hearty. “Now that we’re all together and no one is going to get robbed, why don’t we take that dessert and all go eat it in the kitchen? I’ll make us some tea.”
Tea? Anna couldn’t believe her father was even making the suggestion. She glanced at Margaret, whose incredulous expression was equally reminiscent of how her mother would react.
“I’m not sure that’s the best of notions right now, Jonathan,” Margaret said.
“I agree.” Anna hurried back up the stairs. “I’m sorry about the vase, Dad, and about the interruption. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“Anna, wait.”
“Tomorrow,” Anna called back over her shoulder. “Good night.” “But Anna—”
“Good night.”
Anna made the shower as steamy as she could stand it and scrubbed herself with a loofah. Washed her hair twice. Then soaped herself again. But even with her skin red and raw, she still felt him, still tasted him. Damn Ben. Damn him to hell.
By the time she emerged from the shower, Anna felt woozy. She dried off, donned her favorite Ralph Lauren silk pajamas, and padded back to her room, more than ready to bring this insane day to a close.
It was not to be. She had a visitor: her father, now clad in jeans and a T-shirt. He was waiting for her on the antique chaise longue by the picture window.
“Anna, we have to talk.”
Anna nearly groaned. “Dad—”
“Jonathan,” he corrected.
“Whatever. It’s almost five o’clock in the morning.”
“We need to hash this out.”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow—later today—please?”
“I don’t think it can.”
Anna tried to keep her voice from wavering. “I’m just not up for a talk right now. I’ve had a really long day. And a really awful night.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Me too. Which is why all I want to do is—”
“I won’t be able to sleep with all this tension between us. There are things that need to be said.”
Oh, poor baby. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. Suddenly Anna couldn’t take it anymore. Every awful moment of the past twenty-four hours came bubbling up in her like some kind of bilious sulfur spring.
“Maybe there are things that need to be said, Dad. But you could have said them when you picked me up at the airport. Oh, wait, you didn’t show up for that. Well, when you met me for lunch, then. Oops. Didn’t show up for that one, either. Or when I came home this afternoon and found you passed out in the gazebo—”
“I understand that you’re angry.”
“I’m also exhausted. I don’t think either condition is conducive to a father-daughter bonding moment.”
“It’s awfully harsh of you to judge before you know the facts.”
“What I just said are the facts. You stood me up, Dad.”
As she pulled down the silk comforter on her bed, she mentally added: Oh, by the way, Dad—I got dumped tonight by a boy who pretended that he thought I was a precious diamond and then threw me away like so much cubic zirconia when I wouldn’t put out. And it hurts. It really hurts.
Not that she’d ever tell him that part. But what would it be like to have a father who cared enough to ask her what had made the night so horrible? Or to feel close enough to him to want to tell him? Was it really too much to ask for?
“From your point of view, I stood you up,” her father agreed. “But you never bothered to ask me what happened or why—”
“You’re supposed to be the father here.” She got into bed.
“Have you thought at all about what it’s like for me to suddenly have you back in my life?”
Anna felt as if she’d been punched in the gut. “I thought you invited me. I’ll go back to New York in the morning, if that’s what you want.”
“No, that’s not what I want. Why are you making this so difficult?”
Anna pressed her lips together in a thin line. “Just forget it.”
“No. Jeez, you’re just as touchy as your mother. What I’m trying to say—if you could manage to remove that chip from your shoulder for just a second—is that I’m glad you came.”
Meaningless. His words were just so empty and meaningless. Anna folded her arms and dead-eyed him. For a long moment neither spoke.
Finally her father spread his hands. “Anna, did you expect me to morph into Superdad overnight?”
Anna jutted her chin upward. “No. I don’t expect anything from you at all.”
“There’s that attitude again. Just like your mother.”
“Well, evidently you like her enough to pick her double as your playmate!” Anna exploded.
Jonathan furrowed his eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m sure the fact that Margaret looks just like Mom isn’t lost on you.”
He looked shocked. “Anna, she doesn’t look anything like your mother.”
“You’re joking. Of course she does.”
Her father shook his head. “Honestly, Anna, you’re so exhausted that either you’re hallucinating or delusional.”
“Fine. I’m wrong. You’re right. She looks like a hobbit. She looks like the Velveteen Rabbit. She looks like J. Alfred Prufrock—take your pick. Glad that’s settled. And now I am going to sleep.” She pulled the covers up to her chin, desperate for this day to finally—finally!—come to an end.
Her father regarded her for a moment. His eyes went hazy. “I didn’t want it to be like this. This isn’t how I …”
He sighed. Then he came over to the bed and gently tucked the comforter around her. It took Anna back to a time long ago, when her parents were still married to each other. On the rare night that her father came home while she was still awake, he’d come to her room to make sure she was tucked in and her reading lamp was out. He’d kiss her forehead and then go check on Susan. Anna recalled how cherished she’d felt, how loved. And for that moment all was right with the world.
The long-forgotten memory made a place behind Anna’s eyes ache. With that ache came the title of a Robert Frost poem, the first she’d ever memorized: “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
Twenty-one
11:26 A.M., PST
The young man stood by the front door of the house off North Foothill Drive, talking into his cell phone. “Yeah, I knocked, but no one answered.”
“Did you ring the bell?”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s broken.”
“Did you consider knocking loudly?” Sam asked him.
“If I knock any louder, I’ll, like, wake people up.”
“That’s the whole point, Monty,” she said with exaggerated patience. “If you don’t wake her up, she won’t know you’re there. Which means that you’re like a tree falling in the forest with no one to notice that you’ve fallen. Which means that you don’t actually exist. Which leads directly to an existential black hole. And we don’t want to go there when the New Year is only eleven hours old, do we?”
“Sure don’t,” Monty agreed.
“Great. So knock hard and call me back.”
“Gotcha.” Monty Pinelli put away his cell, pounded hard on the front door, kicked it a few times, and then pounded it again for good measure. Whatever Sam Sharpe told him to do, he’d do, because Sam Sharpe was his ticket.
The fact that Monty and his older brother, Parker, even knew Sam Sharpe was due to their mother, Patti
Pinelli, who made sure that whatever piece of shit apartment they were living in hung on to the tattered fringes of the Beverly Hills 90210 zip code. “No one has to know exactly where you live,” she always said. “Let them think you’re one of them and make the contacts you need. That’s how I did it.”
Contacts were how Monty and Parker’s mom had gotten her first—and only—film role, in an R-rated piece of crap called Posers, about two young models and what they did for love. The other actress had gone on to fame, fortune, and the Hollywood A-list. Patti had never gotten within flirting distance of it. She had, however, flirted heavily with Bruno Pinelli, who owned the club where she’d worked as an exotic dancer. Bruno had promised he’d use his “Hollywood connections” to help further her career. Four years and two kids later she divorced his ass, which was why Monty only knew his father by legend as “that sonofabitch.”
It was right around that time, Monty was pretty sure, when his mom had first been diagnosed with clinical manic depression, a diagnosis she considered to be utter crap. The way she looked at it—she was poor, broke, had two kids, and her looks were going—there would be something wrong with her if she wasn’t depressed.
Monty knew that he and Parker had something their mother lacked: game. Whereas she reeked of working class, desperation, and sales at JC Penney, Monty and Parker had perfected the art of the blend. They were chameleons who could change their striations to match their background. Yep, the Pinelli boys could hang with, even thrive amongst, the rich and the famous.
This was key because Monty’s mom never kept them in one place for very long. Every so often his mom would stop taking her meds. Then she’d get a sudden insight: The neighbors and/or her former Posers costar had hired a hit man to kill her; life was a dark hole and they’d all be better off dead. That would lead her to conclude that the only way to bring herself out of this funk would be to go on an immediate shopping spree, preferably at Neiman Marcus.
She’d head for the nearest upscale mall, where she’d lift some rich bitch’s wallet and use the credit cards to buy anything her heart desired. Accomplished grifter that she was, Monty’s mom would then move her kids to a new place with a good school system, always one step ahead of the law.
But now Patti had told her sons that she was determined her boys would stay in Beverly Hills, no matter what it took. Parker believed her. Monty didn’t. But then, Monty hardly ever agreed with his brother about anything.
Parker, who had been so named because he’d been conceived atop a Monopoly board, was a high school senior. He’d been such a cute baby that people would stop to try and lift him from his stroller in order to get a closer look. At age almost eighteen, he bore a striking resemblance to James Dean, except he was nearly six feet tall. He cultivated this resemblance to the max. Like Dean, he planned to become a movie star at a very young age. Unlike Dean, he planned to live long enough to enjoy it.
Parker had already acquired an agent, albeit one in the San Fernando Valley. While Parker had James Dean’s looks, Monty knew the truth: His big bro had zero talent. His acting deeply sucked. But he had so much personal charisma that people (read: women and gay men and the dried-up prune who taught drama at Beverly Hills High, who kept casting Parker in the leads of the school plays) often overlooked that fact.
Parker’s “agent” was a lascivious older gentleman who liked Parker to do odd jobs around his ranch in Santa Barbara. The old geezer never touched Parker. But just the way he looked at Parker—it was enough to make Monty sick. So he’d never gone again.
Monty (Montana, actually; Patti had been certain that the next generation of movie stars would be named for states of the Union) was a year younger than his brother. Unfortunately, he’d inherited the short, swarthy, large-beaked looks of his long-gone father. He figured out early on that looks were definitely not going to be his ticket; he’d have to find another reason to make A-list kids want to hang with him. Being the kind of guy who wanted to cover all his bases, Monty came up with three: He was willing to be their toadie. He was full of boundless energy and was always up for anything. He had a wicked sense of humor.
In other words, he would do their shit work, crack them up, and keep them up all night having fun. It was a winning combination. That Monty, only a junior, was smarter than the brightest of the A-list seniors was something he kept under wraps. He knew he was much better off having them underestimate him. He had to be particularly careful around Sam, because Sammikins was almost as smart as she was insecure. Monty did not want her to feel threatened. Yet. So for now, he played the affable chump.
Today, Samantha Sharpe’s flunky. Tomorrow, his own production company. One day—the world. Then all of these Beverly Hills brats could kiss his olive-skinned ass. One day, when his big brother Parker was old, ugly, and gumming his food in the William Shatner Home for the Aged, Monty might send him a nice care package of adult diapers and denture adhesive.
Sweet.
For a long time Anna thought the pounding was coming from inside her head. When she finally half opened her eyes, she realized that someone outside was banging on the front door. Evidently her father slept with earplugs, because no one was answering. The clock radio read eleven-thirty.
The banging continued; Anna rose wearily, wrapped herself in her Burberry cashmere bathrobe, and padded downstairs. She peered through the peephole of the front door and got a fish-eye view of a short guy in a baseball cap, with dark hair and a nose too large for his narrow face.
The guy stopped his knocking for a moment and listened. When he heard nothing, he started banging on the door again. Whoever he was, he wasn’t giving up. But Anna was a New Yorker; she wasn’t about to open the front door to a total stranger. “Can I help you?” she shouted.
“If you’re Anna Percy, I have a message for you.”
Anna’s first thought: Ben! She swung open the door. “Yes?”
“You’re Anna Percy?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the meaning of life?”
Anna blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Just wondered if you knew.”
“Did Ben Birnbaum send you?”
“Nope.” Monty handed her his cell.
Anna took it and held it to her ear. “Well?” came an impatient female voice from the other end.
“Who is this?” Anna asked, her voice still smoky from sleep.
“It’s me. Sam.”
Anna’s mind was still only half functioning. “Sam who?”
“Hel-lo? You were a last-minute uninvited guest at my father’s wedding? You got your dress ripped in half? I invited you to a party at Warner Brothers?”
Sam Sharpe? Why would Sam Sharpe send this guy to wake her up? Anna cleared her throat. “Right. Sam. What can I do for you?”
“Is there a short guy with dark hair and a honker the size of J.Lo’s ass with you right now?”
“Um … yes.”
“His name is Monty. I sent him to pick you up. Don’t thank me; that’s just the kind of bitch I am.”
Anna wasn’t processing. Nor did she want to process. “I’m sorry, Sam, but I just woke up. If you could call later—”
“Late night with Ben, huh?”
Ben. It all came flooding back to her. He was the last person Anna wanted to talk about or even think about. And she certainly wasn’t about to talk about him to Sam.
“If we could talk later, Sam—”
“Fine. But I didn’t think you were like that.”
“Like what?”
“You said you’d come. To Venice Beach, to help feed the homeless?” Sam reminded her.
Now Anna remembered. “I’m so sorry, Sam. I completely forgot—”
“Yuh, that’s fairly obvious. Too much Ben on the brain.”
“It’s not that. I just got to bed really late—”
“Fine, blow me off. I’ll send your regards to the little people.”
“Sam, would you stop? I have a splitting headache. But I’ll come.”
> “How magnanimous of you.”
“What I mean is, I want to come,” Anna insisted, rubbing the pounding spot between her eyebrows. “Where do I—”
“Good, see ya.” The cell went dead. Nonplussed, Anna handed it back to the guy, who was waiting with a cheerful look on his face.
“So, what’s up?” he asked her.
“I guess we’re going … wherever Sam is. Just give me five minutes to get dressed.”
Twenty-two
11:32 A.M., PST
Anna washed her face, brushed her teeth, and threw on some jeans, a T-shirt, and an ancient gray cashmere sweater with moth holes in the sleeves. She ran a brush through her hair and pulled it into a ponytail. Then she stuck last night’s evening bag into her larger Coach handbag and hurried back downstairs.
A rumble in her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t really eaten since the previous afternoon’s sandwich with her dad, so she made a quick pit stop in the kitchen, where she found a scrawled note from her father on the kitchen counter.
Anna,
Hope you slept well. Needed to let you know that there’s a snag with the internship thing. Still hope to work it out. Let’s talk later.
—Jonathan
A snag with the internship thing?? Couldn’t her father follow through on anything, ever? If it fell through, she was going to kill him; it was that simple.
She yanked the refrigerator door open angrily and found it nearly empty, except for the last of the crème brûlée cookies—so much for the help keeping the larder stocked. She grabbed a lemon yogurt, stuck it and a teaspoon in her purse, and went out to Monty’s SUV.
“Impressive,” Monty said, starting the engine. He looked at his wristwatch. “Six minutes and thirty seconds.” He looked at the yogurt in her hand and laughed.
“What?” Anna asked.
“Look behind you.”
Anna craned around to see that the entire back of the SUV was filled with food: giant plastic bags of croissants and dinner rolls, huge aluminum foil trays covered in plastic wrap, filled with steak and chicken and a rack of lamb. There was a massive tray of hors d’oeuvres—mini–spinach soufflés, bite-size Reuben sandwiches, and a massive bowl of guacamole.