Girls on film: an A-list novel

by Zoey Dean

  "I have no idea."

  "It could be." Dee sipped her sparkling cider. "That would explain everything. It's fate."

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  Anna put her champagne flute on the coffee table. "Dee. If you want to be my friend, can you at least be honest with me?"

  "You mean about ... ?" Dee put her hand on her stomach again. Then she looked away. "I don't want to talk about that."

  "But you said you wanted to be friends." Anna decided to push it. If she had to sit here with this bizarre girl, she might at least attempt to clear some up some of the maddening puzzle. In some ways, her decision about Adam and Ben made it easier.

  "I do."

  "Ben told me he's not even sure if anything happened that night."

  Dee's eyes grew into twin azure Frisbees. "He said that?"

  "It's not that he doesn't care about your feelings, it's just that he drank too much that night and his memory isn't clear."

  Tears filled Dee's eyes. "So it didn't mean anything?"

  Okay, unless Ben was out-and-out lying, this girl was seriously off the wall.

  "Maybe you built whatever happened between the two of you into something that it really wasn't."

  Dee blinked rapidly. "You two are in love. I knew it."

  "I'm not in love with him. It's over. Whatever 'it' was."

  Dee sighed. "Your aura tells a different story. Well, all I have to say is, in my next life, I want to come back as you." She stood and walked slowly toward the door, the cider forgotten.

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  Beyond weird. Was Dee on something? If so, she needed to quit. And if not, then maybe she should be on something. As in, something prescribed by a psychiatrist. When Dee reached the door, she turned back. "Just tell him the baby and I won't need any financial support. But Ben Junior or little Delia will definitely need his emotional support." Then she closed the door behind her, leaving Anna staring at the placard that explained what to do in the event of a fire or an earthquake.

  Well, that covered natural disasters, but what were people to do if they stepped into an alternate reality?

  As Anna drew a hot bath, her imagination got the best of her. What if Dee was telling the truth? What if she was carrying Ben's child? Anna would never be able to look at that child without being reminded of Ben and all the hurt he'd caused her. What an awful burden for an innocent child to carry.

  But as Anna added designer bubbles to her bath, she forced herself to dismiss those horrible thoughts. Once she lay in the oversized, sunken tub and lazily scattered the rose petals into the water, it was easy to let her thoughts wander off in a different direction. If ever there was a bathtub that screamed "tub for two," this was it. In some ways, she already missed Adam. She always felt great when she was with him. But that wasn't reason enough to lead him on when she was lusting after another boy.

  No. Tub for one was definitely a better idea.

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  Honesty

  Ben lay on a lounge chair by his parents' backyard pool, nursing a beer, staring at the murky, light-polluted Los Angeles night sky. It was nearly two o'clock in the morning, but he was unable to sleep. His father was missing in action and his mother couldn't stop crying. Home was a disaster. In fact, it felt like everything in his life was a disaster.

  Where was Anna now? Was she looking up at the same stars right this minute? Did she think of him at all? Probably not, except to be glad to be rid of him. But even as he thought that, another part of him knew it wasn't true. It couldn't be true. He knew Adam Flood. Even liked him--they'd played pickup basketball together, and Adam had kicked his ass. Adam Flood was a good guy. But Ben was certain that Adam couldn't make her feel that way he could make her feel. If he could only talk to her once more and really explain--

  Bullshit. She's got a new guy. You already decided to let her go, man. So give it a rest.

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  Ben was so startled when his cell phone rang that he nearly dropped his Heineken. "Hello?"

  "Hi. I was dreaming about you." No one else in the world had that dusky, throaty voice.

  "It's two o'clock in the morning, Cammie," Ben said wearily.

  "No, really, I was," Cammie said.

  "I don't want to know what."

  "Yes, you do. We weren't even in bed."

  "Well, that's surprising."

  "Very funny. Listen: You were a lawyer, and you were arguing a case before the United States Supreme Court. I was in the gallery, watching you. And I was so proud."

  Cammie's behavior was so out of character, Ben actually looked at the phone, as if he'd magically be able to look through it and see her. "That's ... nice, Cammie," he said, since he couldn't come up with anything better.

  "Yeah," she said wistfully. "It was."

  Okay, something had to be up with Cammie. She was a calculating girl. Ben took a contemplative sip of his beer. "What do you want, Cammie?"

  "Should I go for honesty?"

  "Sure," Ben said.

  "What I want is ... a fresh start. For us."

  "Come on, Cam," he gently chided her. "There is no 'us' anymore and you know it."

  "There could be. Do you have any idea how sorry I am? That so many things went wrong?"

  "I'm sorry, too, Cammie, but--"

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  "Is this because of Anna?" Cammie asked.

  "We broke up long before I even met her, Cam."

  "But why?" Cammie wailed.

  Ben could hear the tears in her voice. It was so unlike the ice queen that he knew Cammie to be. This tender, vulnerable side was one she kept well hidden. Which made it much more difficult to tell her that it was really over, forever. "We both moved on, Cammie," he finally said.

  "But if you hadn't fallen for Anna, we would have gotten together again at Jackson's wedding. I just know it."

  "Is that why you tore off half of Anna's dress that night?"

  "If I didn't want you, I never would have done that. You should take it as a compliment. We really have to talk, Ben. In person. So why don't you come up here?"

  "Up where?"

  "I'm at Veronique's spa. You know, in Palm Springs. We can go hiking in the desert. Or put up the Do Not Disturb sign and stay in bed all day. I know everything you love, Ben. I know exactly how to kish you...."

  Cammie was slurring. That explained everything.

  "Cammie, have you been drinking?"

  "A little wine, that's all."

  Ben took another swallow of his beer. "Cammie, I really do appreciate the offer, but--"

  "Would you come if Anna was here?"

  That got Ben's attention. "Is she?"

  "No," Cammie said quickly. "She isn't."

  "It doesn't matter," Ben said sadly. "She blew me

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  off. I did some stupid things. I'm getting what I deserve."

  "What stupid things? Like what happened on New Year's Eve?"

  Ben winced. "How do you know about that?"

  "Like there are any secrets in Beverly Hills. I know who the girl was, by the way."

  " What girl?"

  "The one you dumped Anna for on New Year's Eve. She'd love to know."

  "Cammie--"

  " L - o-v-e is the name, isn't it? You met her at your mom's fund-raiser last summer for Cedars-Sinai. You told me all about it, remember? Her pure-as-the-driven-snow public image and her nasty private habits. The lines she did off the cover of her first CD. How wasted she got when her movie tanked. You said she was the Wacko from Waco."

  "I did not, Cammie."

  "Ben, tell me the truth. When we were together, were you cheating on me with her?"

  "Come on, cut it out."

  Ben stood and walked over to the swimming pool. He was barefoot, so he sat on the edge and dangled his feet into the heated water. "First of all, I never said any of those things about her. And I never slept with her. We're friends, that's all."

  "That's Beverly Hills code for T fucked her brains out but I'm being discreet.'"

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  "Cammie, you can think whatever you want; I didn't sleep with her."

  Ben heard Cammie sigh. "It would have been easier if you had. Then at least I'd understand why you broke up with me. Come on, Ben." Her voice was low, sexy, hypnotizing. "Come out to the desert. It's a glorious night out here."

  For one instant Ben was tempted by the head below his waist. From a purely physical point of view, there'd never been anyone like Cammie. A night with her could potentially dull the pain he was feeling over Anna.

  But no. That would just be one more mistake piled atop a tower of them. "I'm sorry, Cammie. I can't give you what you want."

  He heard her sob--something he'd never heard from her before--then she clicked off. Sheesh . He dove into the pool, then surfaced and floated on his back, trying to pick out a constellation--any constellation--in the night sky. He looked for a long, long time. But what he was searching for couldn't be found in the stars.

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  A Scientific Fact

  As the ochre light of morning streamed through her window, Anna read over the new pages of her screenplay. She'd been up all night revising and had come up with the perfect title: Three-Way . The rewrite was a massive improvement, but she still didn't know whether what she'd written was any good.

  The three characters were now renamed: the girl was Nina, and the guys were Dan and Mike.

  After having wrestled forever with the dialogue-- and deciding at three in the morning that her characters spoke as if they'd stepped out of a Harlequin romance-- Anna had finally elected to write three intercuttable monologues where her characters talked directly to the camera.

  Dan's family had recently made a ton of money in the stock market; Mike came from an elite Boston Brahmin family. As for Nina, Anna decided to have her focus on who she was and what she wanted instead of on her background. And in classic Gatsbyan tradition, these hopes and dreams would be in direct conflict to

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  each other: to want a big family and a big career, a simple life and a lot of money, to live a long life but one that involved taking physical risks, and so on.

  The three monologues could also be used as voice-overs to the footage that they would shoot.

  It probably sucks , Anna thought as she stood. Time to face Sam. She'd delivered a copy to her early that morning; they'd agreed to meet on the patio at eleven to talk about it.

  When Anna reached the dining room's outdoor patio, Sam was already at a table in the sun, drinking a steaming cup of what she told Anna was Flora BIJA Healing Tea. She wore a stretch Pucci T-shirt in a riot of primary colors and Seven jeans. Her makeup was as perfectly applied as always, and it was obvious that she'd had her hair blown out that morning at the spa salon.

  A waiter appeared almost instantly. Anna ordered a lemonade as Sam reported that Susan had gone somewhere with Cammie and that Dee was taking a yoga class.

  "Parker's here already," Sam said, indicating the outdoor bar. Anna saw him there with a well-preserved middle-aged woman who wore a pink hibiscus behind one ear. Its shocking-pink color matched a fuzzy sweater so small that it made her breasts look like lethal weapons.

  "Too bad we're not getting that on film," Sam said as the older woman edged closer to Parker with barely disguised lust in her eyes. "Chick's a classic: grew up in Simi Valley ... married some TV industry schlub ... rode his gravy train all the way here."

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  Anna glanced down at her screenplay--it was on the table, next to Sam's teacup. Sam was talking about everything but it. Not a good sign.

  Anna tapped a finger against the title page. "Do you hate it?"

  Sam smiled behind her Gucci aviator sunglasses. "You're nervous! I don't think I've ever seen you nervous."

  "Well, enjoy the moment." Anna folded her arms. "So?"

  "Okay, okay. What you wrote is good."

  Anna was amazed at how pleased she was at the compliment. "Really?"

  "Not great," Sam cautioned. "We'll make some last-minute dialogue changes before we shoot, of course. But I already gave Parker the Dan monologue to work on, so that says something. See that guy talking with Monty up at the bar? With the square jaw and the crew cut? That's Jamie Cresswell. I think his ancestors came over on the Mayflower or something."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because he told me this morning over egg-white omelets. He's never done any acting, but he has a rock band. I said the magic words-- Jackson Sharpe --and then to close the deal, I told him my father is looking for an unsigned group to do a cameo in his new movie. Suddenly he was all jazzed about playing Mike."

  "Is that true?" Anna asked. "About your father looking for an unknown band?"

  "Please." Sam waved a dismissive hand. "My father doesn't deal with those kinds of pissant details. I made

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  it all up, but it's for a good cause. So I'll work with the actors this afternoon, and we'll shoot tonight with cue cards, compliments of Monty and a Magic Marker. It'll be a cinch to cut it in the editing room. Thank you for making our life easy."

  Anna felt great. "Who could have predicted that she'd turn out to be a writer? Her teachers had always told her that she had talent. She remembered a particularly excellent English teacher in middle school who had urged Anna to "let go more" with her writing. Well, maybe she was finally learning to do just that.

  "Who's going to play Nina?" Anna asked.

  "How about... you?" Sam suggested.

  "Definitely not."

  "It was worth a shot. I'd love to have Susan do it, then."

  "Even less of a shot," Anna said. "She wouldn't even let them take her photo for Trinity's yearbook."

  "Then it's going to be Dee," Sam warned. "Unless you change your mind about it being Cammie."

  "No." Anna was emphatic. "Not Cammie. Anyone but Cammie."

  "Speaking of, I have a confession to make. I mentioned to Cammie and Dee about Ben dumping you on New Year's Eve."

  Anna barely blinked. In fact, she was so taken by Sam's honesty that she almost smiled. "Color me shocked."

  "Okay, so you thought I would."

  "Let's just say that the possibility crossed my mind."

  "Fine. In that case, you can't get mad at me."

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  "Who's mad?" Anna asked. "I don't care what they know, and I care even less what they think."

  "Cammie says she knows who the chick was."

  "Sam, quit while you're ahead, okay?"

  Sam reached for a crumpet that was on a dish on the table and took a thoughtful bite. "Like you don't want to know."

  "I don't," Anna insisted.

  "I'm not sure I believe you," Sam said. She put one hand atop Anna's script as if it were Anna's hand itself. "But you have excellent judgment."

  She took a sip of her tea and made a face, then moved the cup to the far edge of their table. "Ugh. I'm never ordering this again. Look, I've always really liked Ben. But your sister is right. Ben's a player. You deserve better. Someone more tender, who will really understand you. And as smart as you, too."

  "If you mean Adam, I told you before. I'm not interested in guys right now, Sam."

  Sam rubbed a contemplative finger along the filigreed iron table. "It's funny, because I'm starting to feel the same way. Sometimes I think all guys are buttholes. Once they get cloning right, men will be obsolete anyway. Ever wonder how much easier life would be if all of the coolest women just went gay?"

  "Not really," Anna replied. This was a very strange conversation. "I don't think it's something you can choose."

  Sam shrugged. "I'm not saying it's something that

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  can be faked, but it's a scientific fact that we're all inherently bisexual. Something to think about..."

  Not likely. At the moment Anna had one or two more pressing things to think about than her own latent bisexuality. Time for a subject change.

  "So ... what's our next step?"

  "Right. I'll ask the concierge
to make more copies of your script. Then I'll make some shooting notes. I'll call at your suite when I'm done," Sam promised.

  "Sounds like a plan," Anna said.

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  Dr. Fred

  Sam pushed the familiar number into her cell and paced while it rang. "Pick up, pick up, pick up," she murmured under her breath. The conversation she'd just had with Anna had been too weird. Because all through it she'd had to make a conscious effort to look at Anna's ear or chin. Because she had become so obsessed with Anna's mouth that it had taken all her concentration not to stare at it. She wasn't thinking about the movie she was about to shoot. She wasn't thinking about anything except Anna's lips.

  Since it was a Saturday, she used Dr. Fred's home number. And while it was true she'd fired her psychotherapist a few days ago, she knew he'd be thrilled to take her back. Dr. Fred might be famous, with his own television show, but Sam's father had helped him get there by hiring him as her shrink. She'd been one of his first children-of-celebrity clients, and Jackson Sharpe had been one of the first guests on his show. The ratings had gone through the roof. Ergo, he owed her, big time.

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  "Hello?" Sam recognized his voice, with its distinctive flat midwestern vowels.

  "Dr. Fred? It's Sam Sharpe."

  "Sam! Good to hear from you!"

  And so he comes crawling back, Sam thought. No more "don't call me at home" or "wait until your next appointment." I knew it.

  "How are you, Sam?" Dr. Fred went on. "I've been concerned about you all year. Of course, the year's just a few days old." He laughed at his own unfunny joke.

  Sam figured her best approach was to pretend that firing him had never happened. "I'm in Palm Springs with some friends. Things are weird."

  "How so?"

  "Well, there's this girl here. Her name is Anna. She's a new friend."

  "Yes?"

  "She's from New York. Smart. Gorgeous. Rich."

  "Yes?"

  "She's amazing. And talented. We're working on this student film for our English class? And she said she'd write the script for it. And I thought, 'Yeah, right. Go ahead. Write your script. But it's going to suck so much that I better write a secret backup script just in case.'"

  "And?" Dr. Fred prompted.