by Zoey Dean
They strolled across the parking lot, where everyone seemed to be getting into their Porsches or BMWs. "Sam's smart," Adam said.
"Yeah, I got that. I almost feel like we could be friends, but..."
"Ah, the infamous but ," Adam joked.
"There are her two appendages to consider."
"Dee and Cammie," Adam filled in. "Little Girl Lost and Not So Little Girl Even More Lost."
"This is me," Anna said when they reached the pearl-gray Lexus that Anna's father had leased for her. She shielded her eyes from the sun with her right hand. "Dee, maybe. But Cammie Sheppard? She strikes me as something of a barracuda."
Adam scratched his tattoo. "Yeah, she puts up a good front, I admit. But she hasn't had an easy go of it.
22
Did you know her mom died in a freak accident? Her stepmother hates her, and her father's nuts. I think she's worse off than Dee."
"Don't you ever say anything mean to anyone?"
"Oh, yeah," Adam replied, eyeing Anna's car. "How about, 'Damn girl, you've got one fine-ass ride and you're the only one in it. Didn't you ever hear about conserving energy?'"
Anna smiled. "Is that a hint you'd like a ride home?"
Adam plunged an invisible dagger into his heart. "Painful as it is to admit, I'm pretty sure I'm the only senior with a b word. As in bicycle. Don't let it get around."
Annie held up her palm. "Promise."
"I usually scrounge a ride with someone," Adam added.
"Just call me someone," Anna quipped. "Hop in."
Adam opened the door for her, then went around to his side and got into the car. Between the balmy afternoon and Adam sitting next to her, Anna started to feel better about life as she pulled onto Sunset Boulevard. Happy, even.
A car horn beeped. Anna turned to see a classic cherry-red Jensen Interceptor, top down, in the lane to her right. Sam was behind the wheel, Cammie in the passenger seat, and Dee in the back. "You two look really cute together!" Sam shouted mockingly. Cammie gave them a laconic wave. "Talk to you later!"
"Well, it's better than the finger," Adam remarked,
23
taking in Cammie's salute. "I think she's jealous that you got Ben. They used to be a couple."
"So I've been told. But to clarify things, I don't in any way, shape, or form 'have Ben.' Nor has Ben had me." Her eyes flicked to Adam, then back to the road.
"Turn right on Rexford and go toward Coldwater. So ... you're not madly, passionately in love with Ben Birnbaum?"
"I don't even like him, Adam."
"Really?" Adam's eyes lit up.
"Really. Why is that such a surprise?"
"Know how there's one guy at every school every girl seems to want? I think God doles 'em out. Ben was that guy last year. And the year before that."
"Well, then, I guess I'm not every girl."
"Good to know. Slow down. My house is on the right, with the hoop in the driveway." Anna pulled in and stopped. Adam swiveled to her. "So. Thanks for the ride."
"You're welcome."
Adam drummed his long, narrow fingers on the dashboard. "So ..."
It appeared to Anna that Adam wanted to say something, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was. She waited patiently. It was the well-bred thing to do.
"Do you like dogs?" Adam blurted.
That's what he wanted to say? "Sure."
He nodded. "I've got one."
"What kind?"
"Serious Heinz. You know. Fifty-seven varieties of
24
mutt. Name's Bowser. I adopted him right after we moved here."
That was a nice thing to do, Anna thought. More waiting and more finger drumming. "So ... ," Adam finally said. "I'm taking him for a run later. Out by Gladstone's. You know it?"
Anna shook her head. "What's Gladstone's?"
"Seafood restaurant between Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades. A ton of tourists, but the beach is lit. I thought if you weren't doing anything, maybe you'd like to come along. Just to hang out."
Was Adam asking her out? As in a date? Or did he mean "hang out" in the just-friends sense? Huh. She hadn't given him a moment's thought as a possible romance because her head had been too full of--
Shut up, head , she scolded herself. "Sounds like fun," she agreed.
"Yeah? Wow. Cool. Oh, dress warm. It gets chilly out there after dark. I'll pick you up at... six, okay?"
"With what?" Anna asked. "I thought you didn't have a car."
"If I call my mom at her office and grovel, she might let me borrow hers. She and my dad commute to work together--they have for years. It's almost too sweet to witness." He got out and waved as Anna pulled out of his driveway.
During the five minutes it took Anna to drive to her dad's house, she thought about what a truly nice guy Adam was. The kind of guy she should be dating.
25
Should.
But Anna hadn't moved three thousand miles for "should."
Anna saw them the moment she pulled into the circular drive of her father's house. The elegant house, built by Anna's grandparents in the 1950s, was massive. White stucco with red shutters, shaded by giant palm and eucalyptus trees. Crimson, pink, purple, and lavender flowers flanked the path to the front door. And today, for extra-added fun, the redbrick front walkway just happened to be lined with hundreds of red and white helium balloons, strings anchored by beanbags on the ground.
She stopped the car, got out, and followed the balloon-lined walkway to the front door. Three more balloons were tied to the handle, and taped to the biggest balloon was an envelope. Anna removed the envelope; in the process the three balloons floated off. She watched them bob into the sky, remembering the last time she'd let helium balloons go free. She'd been six, walking with her parents in New York's Central Park on a hot summer afternoon. She, her mom, and her dad had all written self-addressed postcards and taped them to balloons, asking the finder to please write on the card where the balloon had landed and drop the card in a mailbox.
There'd been an odd east wind that July day, and the balloons had flown west toward the Hudson River. Two days later they'd gotten a postcard back from an old man in Passaic, New Jersey, who'd found one of the
26
balloons dangling from a maple tree in his backyard. It was one of the more vivid memories Anna had of her family when it had seemed happy and whole.
When the balloons were pinpricks against the California blue, Anna opened the envelope.
ANNA --
I SCREWED UP. PLEASE FORGIVE ME. I NEED TO SEE YOU.
-- BEN
Damn him.
Damn him to hell. Why was he doing something sweet and wonderful? And why was she falling for it?
"If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain ...."
The line from an Emily Dickinson poem came to mind as she commanded herself to harden her heart. If Ben Birnbaum thought she could be seduced by a bunch of balloons and a pleading note, he was sorely mistaken. No matter what Anna felt for him, no matter how drawn she was to him, no matter how good he could make her feel, she knew he was bad for her. His gesture was sweet on the outside. But there was no telling what was driving him on the inside.
Anna spotted some pruning shears outside the garage door and used them to release each of Ben's balloons to the heavens--a place Anna was sure that Ben would never be admitted.
27
I Wanna Be Sedated
Samantha Sharpe was drinking tea. And Samantha Sharpe was not happy.
Her movie-star father and his pregnant new wife, Poppy Sharpe (the former Poppy Sinclair, who was now emphatically using her new husband's surname), were having afternoon tea in the five-hundred-square-foot formal dining room of the Sharpe family twelve-thousand-square-foot Bel Air mansion. Thanks to the New Year's Eve nuptials, Poppy was now Sam's stepmother, and the trio were calling said mansion home sweet home.
Logically, Jackson Sharpe and his new bride should still have been on their honeym
oon to Sandy Lane in Barbados. But they hadn't been on the Caribbean island for more than one night when Poppy had awakened in hysterics; she was feeling insecure so far away from Beverly Hills and her obstetrician. Jackson had tried to reason with her; the baby wasn't due for another eight weeks. But Poppy wasn't buying what Jackson was selling. What if something in the exotic diet triggered early labor? What if they didn't have the really good drugs
21
28
that she absolutely had to have when she went into labor?
So they'd chartered a jet and come back to Los Angeles, which was why Sam was currently bonding with the newest member of her family over cranberry and orange muffins, raspberry scones with clotted cream, and fresh papaya.
Poppy loved afternoon tea. She'd read that afternoon tea was served at Buckingham Palace. Poppy's grandmother had been British. For Poppy, that was connection enough to the royals--she ordered that afternoon tea become a Sharpe household institution. Sam had experienced a moment of intestinal distress when she'd come home from school to find that her father and Poppy had ditched their honeymoon. But what could she do? Her father beckoned her to join them over the tissue-paper-thin teacups, so she did. The sight of Poppy sitting there with that humungous Harry Winston diamond on the ring finger of her left hand, which was resting on her humungously pregnant belly, was enough to make Sam shovel down the scones. (It turned out that she was the only one who consumed them. At the last moment Poppy decided that they were too rich and stuck to tea and dry sprouted-wheat bread. As for Jackson Sharpe, he was starting a new movie at the end of the month called Glamour Boys , about the party scene in the eighties. He was to play an AIDS patient and had to lose fifteen pounds before the start of principal photography. All he had for afernoon tea was tea.)
29
"The whole family! This is so nice," Poppy cooed, and blew a kiss across the table to her groom. He blew one back.
Sam swallowed the last of her third scone, beyond appalled. Her stepmother--minus the belly bump-- looked like a Laker Girl. Permatan, legs that never ended, bleached blond hair, and boob-o-licious. Plus she was only four years older than Sam. Talk about your horrific Hollywood clichés.
Sam, a budding film director, often thought of her life as a movie, complete with music score. Her plan was to do for this decade what Scorcese had done for the seventies. What would work now? Maybe something old and punk? "I Wanna Be Sedated"? No. No Ramones. They were using their music in AT&T commercials now. Dead Kennedys, maybe. "Too Drunk to ..." If only her father had taken that song literally. Then Sam wouldn't be looking at acquiring a half-sister or half-brother in a couple of months.
As Sam chewed, Poppy frowned. "I hope you're not binging and purging, Sam. Because I had a friend who ruptured something and nearly died from that."
About fifteen different responses ran through Sam's mind, but she choked them all down in favor of the neutral. "Thanks for sharing."
"Sam ... watch the tone," her father said in between sips of tea.
Apparently not neutral enough.
Poppy looked self-righteous, and Sam gave her a
30
withering look, thinking again how this marriage made no sense. As America's most popular movie star, Jackson Sharpe could have his pick of women. He almost always ended up in a fling with whatever barely-old-enough-to-vote ingénue was in his latest film. When the movie ended, so did the romance. Sam figured her father must be very careful about birth control because if he wasn't-- at the rate he changed girlfriends--he'd have enough offspring by now to form his own Little League team.
So what had happened with this girl? How had Poppy managed to get pregnant and get Jackson to marry her?
Then Sam had a cheery thought: What if Poppy's bun in the oven belonged to someone else? Maybe she could figure out a way to get the baby's DNA tested. If the baby wasn't her father's, maybe Jackson would dump Poppy's ass, and she wouldn't have to lose what little attention her father gave her to some drooling, burping poop machine with Poppy's perfect jawline.
"So, Sam, how's everything going?" her father asked.
Well, at least it was an attempt at showing interest.
"Okay."
"Great, kitten." He slapped his flat abdomen. "I'm in for a killer workout. Billy Blanks is coming over to whip me into shape." He checked his Cellini Quartz Rolex and backed away from the table. She tried to think of something that would keep him at the table a little longer.
31
"I'm making a short film, Dad. For a school assignment."
"That's great, babe."
He already sounded distracted. Not good. "With my friend Anna, from New York. She's really nice--I want you to meet her."
"Uh-huh." He patted the crown of his head to make sure his hair covered the spot that was starting to go bald.
"A sort of Gatsby meets Fellini meets the Beverly Hillbillies thing," Sam rushed on. "So I'll need to give a party, probably Saturday night. And film it."
"Saturday?" Poppy echoed.
"Yes, Poppy," Sam said slowly. "You know, the day after Friday."
"I meant that our renovations are beginning this weekend. So a party would be out of the question."
Sam turned to her father. "Renovations?"
"I told Poppy she could do whatever she wants to with the place," her father said pleasantly. "She doesn't feel at home here yet, and she wants to outfit one of the upstairs rooms for the baby. The one next to yours, in fact."
Sam could practically hear the incessant wail of a colicky baby at three o'clock in the morning. "I think we're fine. I don't want the house redecorated. Well, maybe a little soundproofing."
"Hey, sugarbun, you're off to college next year. You won't even be living here. But for us, it's forever." Her father went around the table and kissed his new wife.
32
"Sam's sorry, Poppy. We all need a little time to adjust to our new family. So what about you today?"
"I'm meeting with my life coach to work on names for the baby. I'm thinking Chrysalis if it's a girl. Isn't that pretty?"
Yeah, Sam thought. Except you wouldn't be able to spell it.
"Then I'm having lunch with Lateesha Allison," Poppy went on. "We might do a CD together."
"Great, sweetheart," Jackson said distractedly as he checked his hair in the mirror over the buffet table.
"Poppy, Lateesha Allison had a number-one single last year," Sam pointed out. "Why would she do a duet with you?"
"Your father set it up. I happen to have a trained voice, Sam."
That was it.
There was only so long that she could sit there and listen to this airhead pretend she had anything going for her other than her marriage to an Oscar winner. Sam stood up, said she had homework to do, and headed for the stairs.
She'd just have to pin all her hopes on the DNA test.
33
Existential Funk
"Hi, Anna." Anna's father, Jonathan Percy, stood in the doorway leading to the palatial living room. Tall and rangy, wearing battered jeans and an ancient blue T-shirt, he easily looked ten years younger than he was. It was strange, because Anna had always known her dad to be a Savile Row suit kind of guy, consumed by his work as one of the country's leading investment analysts--a guy who worked on Christmas because they didn't celebrate in the Asian markets. But in the three days since she'd come to California, he'd mostly been scruffing around in jeans and tees, smelling more than faintly of marijuana.
"Dad. I didn't expect you to be home." Anna swung her leather backpack off her shoulder and set it on the antique rustic French side table. A different Ming vase had already replaced the one she'd accidentally shattered on New Year's Eve. She'd run into it in the pitch-black foyer and sent it crashing to the marble-tiled floor.
"I worked from home today," he explained. "How was school?"
27
34
Anna shrugged. "Honestly? A waste of time. We got assigned Gatsby in lit class. I read it when I was in ei
ghth grade."
Jonathan nodded. "They're probably teaching to some standardized test. Look, I know the internship I lined up for you at Randall Prescott's agency fell through, but I've got something else cooking."
She sighed, not feeling hopeful. "Thanks. I made a bunch of calls yesterday and faxed my resume everywhere. Maybe I'll hear something, too. I guess I'll go upstairs and do my homework. I'm going out later."
"Can you come into the kitchen? I want to talk to you about something."
Her first instinct was to make some excuse as to why this wasn't a good time for a heart-to-heart. Avoiding confrontation was a knee-jerk reaction instilled by Anna's mother, who referred to any encounter with an emotional component as "making a scene." But part of Anna's motivation for coming to Los Angeles had been to take the opportunity to get to know the father who'd left Anna's life when she was only seven. The split had been so hostile, he'd been forced to leave his wife with not only the Manhattan duplex but full custody of the children and the entire East Coast.
So she followed her dad into the spotless, ultramodern kitchen. There was a stainless-steel center island for cooking, a restaurant-quality double oven against one wall, and a red Swedish table and matching chairs that could have easily fit in the design wing of the Museum of Modern
35
Art. For once, none of the household staff was lurking.
Her father peered inside the refrigerator. "Sparkling water? Soy milk? Juice?"
Anna was surprised. The cook seemed to purchase what she needed on a daily basis, which left the refrigerator empty. "Since when do we have cold beverages?"
"Since I had Gelson's deliver groceries. What can I get you?"
"Juice is fine. Any kind." Anna took a seat as her dad poured pear juice into two Baccarat crystal goblets and handed one to Anna
"So, how's your mom?"
She was what he wanted to talk about?
"Still in Italy," Anna said, keeping her voice neutral. "I haven't spoken to her since the last time you asked me. Yesterday."
"I thought the two of you kept in really good touch." He stood near the cooking console, as if reluctant to sit.
Anna shrugged. "I have her phone number. If you're so interested in how she's doing, call her."
