American Beauty

by Zoey Dean

  As the day had gone on, and Parker had gone through his usual daytime routine when he didn’t have to go to school, he found himself thinking more and more of Sam. Not in a romantic way. At least, he didn’t think so. Oddly, he had really enjoyed kissing her the night of prom. But what the hell, maybe he’d enjoy kissing any girl that rich. If he got desperate enough, he could probably learn to enjoy kissing a guy that rich. But it was more than the money, and more than good acting on Parker’s part. He liked her. Yeah, he was very, very grateful that she hadn’t blown his cover after figuring out the truth about his depressingly low family income level during their trip to Vegas, but gratitude didn’t explain why he was where he was at that very minute.

  He’d tried to fight the feeling. He’d gone for a run along San Vicente Boulevard down to the ocean, and then watched DeNiro in a DVD of Raging Bull. The movie only made things worse; that much acting talent was intimidating. He even raided his mom’s meager liquor cabinet and downed a couple of shots of her el-cheapo bourbon. Then he’d sat in his mother’s very used Barcalounger with the bottle by his side, staring blankly at Animal Planet, where a lioness stalking a zebra herd spotted a small zebra that had come up lame. In two seconds, that zebra would become the lioness’s lunch— just like he would have if anyone but Sam had learned his secret.

  Goddamn. He liked Sam. He owed Sam. Sam had power, maybe even the power that could likely give him a break in the business down the road. She was hurting because of their prom kiss, caught in the act by her boyfriend. Maybe there was something he could do for her that would not only be kind, but also be in his enlightened self-interest.

  On Animal Planet, the Australian guy who looked like Matt Damon’s bigger, taller, and more handsome brother was talking directly to the camera, making a big deal about how he was going to cheat death on the Serengeti plain and walk straight into the lioness’s den—the same lioness that had just torn the lame zebra several new orifices and checked out the caloric content of its hindquarters.

  Bingo. He knew what he had to do. It might not involve eating raw zebra, but it definitely could mean he’d have to consume a good deal of crow.

  Fuck it. He’d better do it now, before he lost his nerve.

  Parker looked at the paper slip in his hand that had been handed to him by the guard at the entrance to the consulate, which occupied the eighth floor of a nondescript office building. He was number ninety-one. The electronic sign above the long glass window in front of him said that number eighty-five was being served.

  “Numero ochenta y seis, numero ochenta y seis, number eighty-six to the visa window, number eighty-six to the visa window.”

  His seat companion bounded to her feet with the energy of someone much younger, brandishing her navy blue American passport. “Well, see you in Peru, young man. What airline are you flying?”

  “TWA,” Parker replied. He’d never flown internationally and only a few times within the United States. TWA was the first airline he could think of.

  The elderly woman frowned. “Young man, TWA went out of business at least five years ago. I hope you didn’t actually pay for a ticket.” With that, she departed.

  Her departure was a good omen. Numbers started to be called in rapid succession. Eighty-seven. Eighty-eight. Eighty-nine. Ninety.

  Ninety-one. Parker got his old Campmor green knapsack from the floor under his seat and went up to the glass window, where a beautiful Peruvian girl with thick dark hair and Angelina Jolie lips smiled at him.

  “How may I help you, señor?” Her voice was soft and melodious; Parker had to remind himself of his mission and restrain himself from flirting. Besides, if she had any money, she definitely wouldn’t be behind that damn desk.

  “May I speak with Eduardo Muñoz, please? He’s working here for the summer.”

  The beautiful young woman looked puzzled. “You want to speak with Eduardo? You don’t want a visa?”

  “Nope. No visa.”

  “You could have come up to the desk to tell me this sooner.”

  Great. Now that he’d wasted a fucking hour and a half with his ass in one of those ugly-ass plastic chairs.

  “Could you tell him that Parker Pinelli would like to see him? For just a few minutes. Tell him it’s important. It’s … Tell him it’s about Sam.”

  “Okay. Please sit. I’ll call him. If he’s available, that is …”

  Her voice trailed off, and Parker was tempted to up the flirt quotient again. How could he be sure that Eduardo was even here? If he wasn’t, why shouldn’t he ask this lovely señorita for a drink? He doubted that anyone had yet taken her to the Viper Room, or the Derby, or even a salsa place, like Club Bahia on the dicier part of Sunset.

  He sat, folded his arms, and waited some more.

  Ninety-three. Ninety-four. Ninety—

  The wooden door next to the long glass window opened. Eduardo peered out. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and yellow tie, a stark contrast with Parker’s battered Levi’s, white T-shirt, and red baseball jacket from a minor-league team in Las Vegas.

  “Parker Pinelli?” he asked, his voice impersonal.

  Parker stood.

  “Please.” Eduardo motioned with one hand for Parker to join him behind the door.

  Again, Parker grabbed his backpack. Ninety seconds later, he was sitting with Eduardo in a small conference room ringed by file cabinets, plus a small TV with a DVD player and a couple of computers.

  Eduardo’s face was impassive; neither pleased nor displeased to see Parker here on his own turf. Then he smiled thinly. “What do you want? Did Samantha send you?”

  Parker shook his head. “I came here on my on my own.”

  “That is good to know. Do you know what she did this morning?” Without waiting for Parker’s response, he reached under the conference table and extracted a white documents box that normally held files. “Look.”

  It was the strangest thing. The box was filled with brand new cellular telephones phones—there had to be at least fifty or a hundred, maybe even more.

  “Try one,” Eduardo instructed. “They’re all charged. Call your own cell.”

  Parker took one at random from the open box—a Samsung SGH-E635, punched in his own digits, and pressed send. Nothing. Just a Verizon voice saying that the call could not be completed.

  “Didn’t work, right? Try any other number. On any phone you want.”

  Parker switched phones, this time to a red Verizon 5200. His cell. His brother’s cell. His mother’s cell. Nothing. Strange.

  “None of these phones work?”

  “Oh, they work.” Eduardo smiled that thin smile again. “Try the speed dial. Any speed dial.”

  Parker pressed the digit 4. It dialed Sam’s number. Eduardo yanked the phone from Parker’s hand, ending the call before it connected.

  “I must say this for Samantha. She is … What is the word in English? Indefatigable.”

  Parker was impressed. Sam really wanted Eduardo back. Well, he could try to do his part too.

  “She is,” Parker agreed. “And I just wanted to tell you, Eduardo, that what happened after prom was totally my fault. We were drinking, and I was the one who made the first move. She was a little toasted and a lot depressed.”

  “Depressed about what?”

  Parker pointed to the DVD player and TV. “Do you mind? I want to show you something.”

  Eduardo looked skeptical, but nodded. “Go ahead, but keep the volume down.”

  Parker got his backpack and rooted around in it for a certain DVD. Then he brought it over to the Bose player, popped it in, and turned on the TV. Almost instantly, a picture appeared—it was film taken by Parker’s brother Monte at the Beverly Hills High School prom, on the set of Ben-Hur out in Palmdale. The film was from the pivotal moment of prom, when the prom queen and king were announced. Parker saw that Eduardo was transfixed by the images: the impossible moment when Sam was named queen of the prom. Monte had come in close on Sam and focused on her face—sho
ck, disbelief, and finally, amazed pleasure as she mounted the stage at the far end of the Coliseum movie set to frenzied cheers from the thousand-plus crowd of students and faculty. He zoomed in even closer at the climactic moment when the glittering tiara was placed on Sam’s head, and Fee Berman stepped to the microphone for an impromptu speech:

  “I think we all know that Sam Sharpe single-handedly saved our prom,” Fee recounted into the mike.

  As Fee’s words echoed around the Coliseum, Monte had panned the crowd: every head in the place was nodding fervently. Parker snuck a glance at Eduardo. He was rapt.

  “I mean, how great is this?” Fee continued. “Here we are on the set of Jackson Sharpe’s next unbelievable movie. Sam, we all just want to thank you for taking lemons and making lemonade!”

  Parker turned off the DVD and TV. “Sam was a hero that night, Eduardo.” He took the disk out of the player. “A real hero. I don’t know how much you know, but our prom was completely ruined. It was supposed to be at the Bel-Air Grand Hotel, but that hotel burned down the week of prom. Sam was the one who figured out what to do. Sam was the one who made all the arrangements. Sam was the one who thought of everything. Sam was even planning to make a movie about it. You’re asking why she was so bummed out, so upset that she’d let me kiss her … and maybe even kiss me back? The answer is simple: Because you weren’t there to see it.”

  Whew. Parker hadn’t intended to go on that long. He didn’t want to seem like he was overplaying his hand. Yet the passion of his words got the best of him. Sam had saved the day, and she’d been planning to make a movie of the prom do-over. When she’d won prom queen, the movie had been ruined, because she knew no one would take seriously a documentary where the filmmaker ended up as the belle of the ball being filmed.

  “She didn’t tell you, right?”

  Eduardo nodded.

  “Yeah, didn’t think she would. That’s why I came here. That’s why I wanted you to see that. It hurt her that she couldn’t make her film, but it hurt more that you weren’t there to see her moment of glory.” Parker stood. “Look, the girl really, really loves you. She’s special. Hell, she doesn’t even know how special she is, but she’s …” He stopped, then started again. His eyes met Eduardo’s. “You don’t just throw something like that away, man.”

  Eduardo’s eyes clouded. “What she did … you did … It was still a betrayal.”

  Parker shrugged. “Like I said, we were drunk. But it didn’t mean shit.” Then he switched to Spanish. “Si yo podría vivir esa noche otra vez, no habría hecho lo que lo hice. Y de la manera que me has recibido aquí hoy, debo decir que mi amiga Sam es afortunado tenerle. Gracias, Eduardo. Yo significo eso.”

  The look of shock on Eduardo’s face pleased Parker greatly. His high school grades had always sucked … except in Spanish, where his twelfth-grade teacher was a fox. He’d just told Eduardo that if he could do it over again, he’d do it differently, and that from the way Eduardo had allowed him—Parker—to make his case here, he thought Sam was lucky to have him as a boyfriend.

  “Where did you learn to speak Spanish like that?”

  “We have schools in America too. But there’s one thing they can’t teach, no matter how good a student you are.”

  “Okay. What’s that thing?”

  “To get your goddamn head out of your ass, Eduardo. Before it’s too late.”

  Celebrity Gawk Session

  When Anna went to meet Ben for breakfast the next day at Nate’n Al’s delicatessen on North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, she was determined to be what Sam had described as an “active heroine.” There was something off between her and Ben, but she wasn’t just going to wait around miserably and see what would happen. She would take matters into her own hands and address it. “I can’t pretend everything is fine when it so obviously isn’t. It’s insulting to both of us.”

  Yes, that was what she would say. If it meant that she and Ben were done, so be it. It would hurt. It would hurt a lot. But there were other guys in Los Angeles, and it wasn’t like their relationship had been a plate of …

  Oh God. She was so full of it. Ben was her first everything. Her only everything. How could he have stopped loving her?

  What did one wear to confront one’s boyfriend? Her mother would have insisted on high-priced battle armor—Chanel would be perfect. So Anna did just the opposite. She pulled a plain white T-shirt from her drawer and an ancient pair of cargo khakis. She did opt for Chanel, but only on her feet—comfy ballet flats. With her hair back in a ponytail tied by a black silk ribbon, a little Stila brown mascara, a slick of Smith’s Rosebud Salve on her lips—that was it. Take her or leave her.

  Nate’n Al was the most famous deli in Beverly Hills, with a simple storefront that boasted its name in bright orange script. The interior was spacious, with booths and tables all variations on orange and white. Off to the left was an actual delicatessen counter, with glass cases full of herring, lox, pickled tomatoes, and other delicacies.

  The place was popular, an industry hangout for decades. In fact, as Anna stepped through the door, it seemed like Nate’n Al was packed to well over its human capacity. She knew that Ben was supposed to be here already to find a booth, but how was she going to find him in this mass of Hollywood hipsters, ladies-who-lunch out for breakfast instead, waitresses in their fifties and sixties in orange dresses that must have been high fashion forty years ago, and tourists enjoying a celebrity gawk session? Just to her left, in fact, a tight knot of foreign visitors surrounded one table, talking excitedly to one another and pointing. All Anna could understand were the words American Idol, which meant that someone from a show even she had heard of was dining at that very moment.

  She felt a strong male hand on her right shoulder.

  “Table for two, madame? Come right this way.” She turned. Ben wore a green V-necked Fila rugby shirt with khaki pants. He looked great. More than that, he looked different, and not just because he’d gotten his hair trimmed between the last time she’d seen him and now, or because he sported a scruffy growth of beard that Anna found very sexy. It was his eyes—as she looked into them, all she saw was love.

  “I might have to hit on the maître d’,” Anna mused, as Ben led them through the restaurant. “Or is he taken?”

  “Very taken. But since when have you ever ‘hit on’ anyone?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

  “You don’t say? No, wait. Come to my table and tell me every titillating detail,” Ben suggested. He tried to force his brows and mouth into an impression of Jim Carrey, but failed miserably. Still, Anna giggled as he helped her into a vacant chair at a table for two with a RESERVED sign on it. Just like that, all was right with the world again.

  A well-past-middle-age waitress with dangerously tall brown hair and legs like tree stumps lumbered over to their table. She wore an orange Nate’N Al uniform that had likely looked good twenty pounds ago, but miraculously didn’t restrict her movement as she poured coffee for them both. “The matzo brei will be out in a minute, Benny,” she reported. “Ditto the sable platter.”

  Ben grinned and pointed to his watch. “I’m timing you, Myrtle.”

  “Timing, shmining,” Myrtle scoffed in her warm yet gravelly voice, obviously unfazed. “Remember, I control your breakfast between the kitchen and here. I could tell you stories about what Phoebe did to a certain notorious Oscar-winning actor’s tongue-pastrami-roast-beef sandwich when he was rude to her, but I’d hate to ruin your appetite. How’re your parents?”

  “Great. And don’t try to blame Phoebe, either. I heard this unnamed actor has your picture up on his dartboard.”

  “I ain’t saying I did anything, but whatever happened, he deserved it.” Myrtle lumbered back toward the kitchen.

  “She’s been a waitress here since I was a kid.” Ben leaned over the booth, grinning. “She used to be an actress in Roger Corman’s horror films.”

  No doubt. Ben was back. Apparently, better than ever.
/>   “You’re different today,” she declared.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Myrtle had also poured fresh-squeezed orange juice. Anna took a sip; slightly tart and slightly sweet, it was delicious. At the next table, a couple of producers were arguing over possible casting for their next feature, an action flick about a lonely female cruise ship captain who decides to quit her job and enter the competitive world of speedboat racing. One wanted Angelina Jolie, one wanted Renée Zellweger. Their voices got louder and louder.

  “It’s the talent, Richie. It’s the talent. Renée has the talent!”

  “Screw that, Freddie. What would you rather see? Cold Mountain or Tomb Raider? I tell ya, Jolie’s butter!”

  In best This Is How We Do Things Big Book fashion, Anna was doing her utmost to ignore the distraction. Ben, however, leaned over toward them. “Hey, guys? I write for the Hollywood Reporter. What’s the picture? Maybe I can do a story for tomorrow?”

  The two squat-looking men—both in standard-issue jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps to cover their candidacy for the Hair Club for Men, backpedaled furiously.

  “We’re still in preproduction—”

  “We’re not ready to be in the trades—”

  “We’ll be greenlit any day now, I swear it.”

  “Fine,” Ben replied, nodding. “Then please keep the volume down. You see this girl?” He hitched a thumb toward Anna. “Gorgeous, huh? I think I’m in love, and I need a little quiet here so that I can tell her.”

  The thinner of the Hair Club men nodded. “Okay, wise guy. Just don’t get married. Ruins everything.”

  “I’ll certainly keep that in mind,” Ben assured him.

  Myrtle brought them the sable platter—bright pink slices of fresh lox, golden pike, sliced tomatoes, and the sable itself, which Anna discovered was close to smoked cod but altogether wonderful. There were two sliced everything bagels shedding sesame and poppy seeds, plus small brown chunks of roast garlic and flecks of salt.