Girls on film: an A-list novel

by Zoey Dean

  "Scripts?" Sam hooted in disbelief. "You want scripts? There are ten thousand of them in my dad's study. Movie scripts, play scripts, book manuscripts. From the biggest writers in the world. You want to know why? Because they all know that if they can get my father attached to their project, they'll get the movie made, and they'll make the easiest million dollars they ever made. Scripts? Come on over, you're welcome to them. But I'll tell you ahead of time, most of them suck. Which is why most movies suck."

  Anna fiddled with her coffee cup as she waited for

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  the Braun to do its thing. "This is just not my style," she fretted. "I've never left a train wreck behind me like this. It feels terrible."

  "Anna, you didn't do anything. Your sister did."

  "You're right," Anna said. "I'm calling Margaret."

  Anna found Margaret's cell number but only reached her voice mail. She left a brief apology, asked Margaret to return the call, and hung up. The coffee was ready, so she poured two cups and handed one to Sam. "Cream? Sugar?"

  "Black."

  "What a day." Anna took a sip of the steamy brew. "How about we go sit in the gazebo? It's beautiful out back, and I need to clear my mind of homicidal impulses."

  They walked outside, following the backyard path to the old-fashioned gazebo. "If you let Cammie get to you, she wins, you know," Sam pointed out as they sat down.

  "Why is it always about winning and losing, Sam? How can it make her feel better to hurt me? It's really sick, you know."

  "Yeah, well, if it's a sickness, it's the plague of Hollywood. Besides, Cammie has some great qualities, too."

  "You're defending her?"

  Sam's eye fell on a statue of Cupid in the center of the gazebo floor; someone had placed a fresh red rose in Cupid's quiver. "Let's just say I know how much it can hurt to have a broken heart."

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  "So do I, but that doesn't excuse her behavior. When I look at her, all I see is hate." Anna reached over and put her hand on Sam's. "But you ... you're a good person. You're better than Cammie. And you're too smart for Dee. You don't have to hang with them."

  Sam's heart lurched. Was it possible that Anna was responding to her? And if she was, was it a platonic response ... or otherwise? Sam wanted Anna to be her friend. But she also wanted Anna to kiss her. But she also did not want to be gay or even bi, despite how chic it was these days to be either of those two things. Dr. Fred could say anything he wanted to say about not acting on impulses, but just feeling what she was feeling as Anna's hand rested atop hers was enough to send her into an anxious tizzy.

  Sam pulled her hand away. She could be Anna's friend, maybe. If they just didn't touch. No matter what her own body was telling her to do.

  "Forget me," she said briskly. "Let's talk about you and Ben. Because there still is a you and Ben, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that there isn't."

  "Sam, he dumped--"

  "Yadda, yadda, yadda, heard it a zillion times," Sam singsonged. "Don't you ever give someone the benefit of the doubt?"

  "Meaning what? He told me the truth?"

  "How the hell do I know? Maybe yes, maybe no. So for one night, he didn't earn an A on your daily report card of life. So what? God, you're so full of it. The real reason

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  you're resisting is because you're afraid. Afraid you might get carried away to someplace with him that you've never gone before. Afraid he'll make you want to burn that stupid report card. I think it scares the shit out of you."

  When Anna didn't answer, Sam could see that she'd hit the mark.

  Anna looked around the landscaped backyard and frowned. "Funny. I came to California to get away from everything. But it feels like a whole new everything has followed me here."

  "Yeah, well, as Dr. Fred always tells me, 'Wherever you go, Sam, there you are.'" Sam wasn't sure if she was talking about herself or about Anna. Or maybe both.

  "I just want to get away. Ever feel like that?"

  "All the time. But I'd miss my morning blowouts with Raymond. Kidding. Listen, why don't you do it? Get away?"

  "How can I? There's Susan and Margaret and our project...." Anna blinked. "That's funny. Because I just thought of the perfect place."

  "Where?"

  "I saw it in a magazine in the reception area at Apex. The Montecito Inn, I think it was called."

  "Oh, sure, I've been there," Sam said. "It's up the coast in Santa Barbara. A little low-key for my taste, but okay."

  "It looked beautiful. God, I'd love to go," Anna said wistfully.

  "Just get in the car and go, then."

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  Anna's eyes lit up. "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. But be back by Tuesday night. We've got a lot of film to edit. I took the liberty of looking at the rushes on the monologues we filmed this morning, and they were as good on the screen as they were on the page. I told you, I really do think you have a lot of talent. Anyone who can make Dee Young sound appealing has a gift."

  Anna smiled. "Thanks, Sam. For everything. I really do owe you. I mean it."

  "Yeah, you do. Don't worry, I'll collect." She added a smile of her own. "Give me your valet claim ticket from the party. I'll have one of my dad's flunkies bring your car back here."

  Ten minutes later Sam was on her way back to the Sharpe estate in Bel Air, her thoughts tumbling over each other. Ben and Anna. Adam and Anna. Anna's claim that she didn't want to be with Ben or Adam. Sam and Anna. What Sam found herself wanting, more than anything, was to have Anna be her friend. The kind of friends that helped each other and did selfless things for each other, all in the name of friendship. Well, at least that was what happened in the movies.

  Her life might not be a movie. But that didn't mean Sam Sharpe couldn't do something selfless for once in her overprivileged life. Before she could talk herself out of it, she used the hands-free dialer in her car to call a number on her cell.

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  Fifty Grand

  Anna stayed out in the gazebo for a few minutes after Sam departed, calling Margaret again on her cell and reaching nothing but the answering machine. Then she just sat there, railing against the dying light of this bizarre Sunday.

  With darkness came the chill of evening and a brisk Pacific breeze, which made her return to the house. As soon as she stepped into the kitchen, her father thundered at her. "Anna? What the hell happened?" He stood up from the table, a full brandy snifter in his hand. "And what the hell is Susan doing passed out on your bed?"

  "Susan happened. She met me at the party. She was drunk. I had to get her out of there, Dad."

  "Did you tell Margaret?"

  "She saw me. But there wasn't time for me to talk to her."

  "Well, then, I imagine you're out of an internship," Jonathan said.

  "It was the right thing to do. Susan was in trouble. I'd do exactly the same thing again."

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  Jonathan sat back down at the table. "Margaret never should have asked your sister to go there. It's not like she didn't know she was straight out of rehab.... What am I saying? There I go, making excuses for her. We all make excuses for Susan."

  Anna sat down opposite her dad. "For what it's worth, Susan didn't get drunk on her own."

  "Someone poured booze down her throat?"

  "No," Anna admitted. "At least I don't think so."

  Her father rubbed his eyes. "She blames me, doesn't she?"

  What was wrong with her family? Didn't anyone take any responsibility for anything? "Listen, Dad," Anna said, changing the subject and backing away toward the stairs. " I think I need to get away for--"

  "Anna, wait."

  Something in her father's voice made her stop. She folded her arms and strove for a patience she didn't feel. "What?"

  "Our family is very good at avoidance," Jonathan said. "With Susan ... when she went away to Bowdoin ... Jeez, this isn't easy." He set his brandy snifter down on the table.

  And suddenly it occurred
to Anna--her father was trying to tell her something specific. About Susan.

  "I knew something happened, Dad. I just never knew what it was."

  "The truth is, your sister's life was in danger. She'd gotten involved with this lowlife musician," her father

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  said. "Sex, drugs, rock and roll---the whole nine yards. If there was a problem, he had it. And he was giving it to your sister."

  "Did you try to talk to her?" Anna asked.

  "Endless times," Jonathan said. "She'd swear to us that she was going to end it but then never did. It was like a sickness. I mean, the guy got her hooked on I don't know what. We should have seen it for the addiction that it was."

  Anna gulped. She'd never heard the details of this story before--and now she could understand why Susan was so reluctant to talk about it.

  "I'm sorry," she told her father. "It must have been extremely hard for you and Mom."

  "No kidding," Jonathan said. "It was like your sister was this out-of-control car, careening toward a cliff, with no steering wheel or brakes."

  "Is that so?"

  Anna turned. A very pale, unsteady Susan was in the doorway, supporting herself against the door frame with her hands. "An out-of-control car, without a steering wheel or brakes? I come down for a drink of water, and I get this ?"

  "It was the truth!" Jonathan said emphatically.

  "It's as far from the truth as a lie can be," Susan retorted. "The truth is, Anna, I was crazy about Eric. Mother, of course, was appalled because he was so wildly inappropriate. She used to send me notes on her raono-grammed stationery--handwritten--where she'd mention

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  the lovely boys at Dartmouth and Williams I'd gone to school with and how they were all asking about me. It was her way of saying, 'Get rid of your loser boyfriend.' As for our dear father, he had other methods."

  "Susan, it was a long time ago. There's no need to wallow in this story," Jonathan said.

  "Pardon my French, Dad, but fuck it. We should have told Anna a long time ago." Susan looked at Anna again. "Mom was so upset that she asked Dad to make a trip back east to see Eric. Then Dad, in his usual diplomatic fashion, explained to Eric that he could make it worth Eric's while to drop out of my life."

  It took Anna a moment to understand what Susan meant. "You mean, he paid your boyfriend to dump you?" She whirled on her father in disbelief.

  "He was a scummy--"

  "Oh my God, you did. How much did you pay him?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "I'd just like to know the going rate," Anna said coldly.

  "Fifty grand. And he took it. He even told Susan about it before he left. Your mother and I did you a favor, Susan."

  "Well, guess what, Dad? I think about it every time I get high. I'm worth fifty thou!"

  Anna put her head in her hands. Some things were finally starting to make sense. "How long is that going to be your excuse?" their father asked defensively. "For living like a pig and hating us and drinking yourself to death?"

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  "How?" Anna whispered to her father. "How could you do that to her?"

  "Yes, Daddy dearest," Susan said. "How could you do that to me?"

  Jonathan slumped in his chair. "When you're a parent, you'll understand. For what it's worth, I'm sorry. "

  Save for the metallic whine of the refrigerator, the kitchen was silent for a long time. Finally Anna said, "Look, you two. I'm going away for a day or so. I'll be back on Tuesday. In the meantime I strongly suggest you continue this conversation from Dad's 'I'm sorry' and go from there."

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  The Truth

  The Montecito Inn was directly on the ocean, just a few miles south of Santa Barbara. As the bellboy led Anna to her suite, she could hear waves crashing and terns calling. She'd brought a single overnight case with her--it was all the baggage she had, unless you counted the emotional kind.

  The bellboy cracked the windows and turned on some soft lights and the ceiling fan. Anna tipped him well; he departed. Then she lay down on one of the two queen-size beds and watched the lace curtains dance in the breeze. The suite was done in pale shades of aquamarine and blue. Above her, an old-fashioned wooden ceiling fan whirred slowly. It felt like a symbol of her life--turning, turning, but going nowhere. No clue how to separate who she was from who she was raised to be.

  Funny. Hadn't Susan found herself in the same situation at just about the same point in her life? At Bowdoin she'd tried to figure out who she was, separated from her family for the very first time, until the

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  velvet noose of their parents' fortune had wound around her neck, choking the fledgling self she'd been trying to create. But wasn't making mistakes part of figuring out who the hell you were--even choosing the wrong guy? Anna thought again how out of touch her parents had always been with their daughters.

  But they didn't turn your sister into an alcoholic , a voice in her head said. Anna was worried about her sister, but ultimately Susan would have to be responsible for herself. Just as Anna had to take responsibility for letting Brock wander off at the Steinbergs' party. If the internship at Apex was gone--maybe Margaret would give her another chance, maybe not--it was entirely her own responsibility.

  So really--

  Enough. Anna sat bolt upright. Too many thoughts! She needed to move, not think. A run on the beach was just what she needed. So Anna changed into running shoes, shorts, a T-shirt, and a Trinity sweatshirt, tied her room key to her sneakers, and left.

  The night was brisk but pleasant. Anna jogged down to the water's edge. When she reached the hard sand below the high-tide line, she picked up her pace, grit crunching under her Reeboks. She hadn't gotten any exercise lately, and it felt great to push her body. She really needed to get into a ballet class, get some discipline back into her life and--

  God, it was so hard for her to turn off the noise in her mind. Even when she didn't want to, she overthought

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  everything! She forced herself to concentrate on her breathing--in, out, in, out, in, out--as she ran laps around the inn and down to the ocean.

  Thirty minutes later she stopped, plopping down at the base of a lifeguard stand. She guessed she'd run three miles. She pulled off her sweatshirt, wiped it across her sweaty brow, and then dabbed at her neck.

  "We can't go on meeting like this, Anna."

  Anna almost jumped out of her skin. Someone--a male--was on the other side of the lifeguard stand. She thought it sounded like ... but it couldn't possibly be ...

  But it was.

  Ben came around the structure, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans. He wore a blue fisherman's sweater that matched his eyes. "How's 'hi' for an opener?" he asked.

  Her mind was trying to catch up with reality. He was there with her, on the beach in Santa Barbara, at midnight. "What are you ... how did you ... ?"

  "Sam called me tonight and told me you were here," Ben said. "I saw you running when I arrived."

  "Why would she do that? Call to tell you where I went?"

  Ben shrugged. "I think it's called friendship."

  "And I think what you're doing is called stalking," Anna said, pushing hair that had escaped from her ponytail off her sweaty face. "I came here to be alone."

  "I have something to tell you. After that, you can

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  spend your whole life alone if you want to. I'm just so damn sick of lying."

  Lying. Ben had been lying. In her heart, she'd known all along. "I'm sick of it, too, Ben. So why don't you tell me the truth?"

  "You think it's easy?"

  "So it isn't easy, so what? Hardly anything worth doing is easy. Why can't you just--oh, forget it!" Frustrated, she picked up a rock and flung it into the surf.

  "The truth is, I wasn't with some mystery celebrity after I left you on New Year's Eve," he said. "I was on a plane to Vegas."

  Las Vegas? That made zero sense.

  Anna waited
for him to continue. He looked straight out at the ocean as he spoke. "It wasn't some big actress who nearly died. It was my asshole of a father. He has a gambling problem. A big one. He makes a small fortune and gambles away more. My mom was the one who called me. They'd had a fight that night, and he'd driven off to Vegas to play thousand-dollar-a-hand blackjack. That was no big thing. Until my mom discovered that he'd taken a loaded pistol with him."

  Anna couldn't help it. She gasped.

  "She called the police--so you can check this story out if you want to. But I wasn't going to wait for the police. I went straight to LAX and flew to Vegas. Found him at the Bellagio--that's where he always stays-- sixty grand in the hole. When I tried to pull him away

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  from the table, he punched me. His plan was to either win or blow his own brains out."

  Anna's hand flew to her mouth.

  "Nice, family, huh?" Ben asked bitterly.

  "Why didn't you just tell me?" Anna whispered into the dark.

  "Because it's goddamn humiliating, that's why. And because I've kept his secrets for so many years, I hardly know how to tell the truth anymore. So now my mom's checked into the UCLA psychiatric unit for 'exhaustion'"--he raised his quote fingers, pausing in disgust-- "the euphemism my family likes to use. That's why I haven't gone back to school."

  So, she wasn't the reason he was still in town. A bit of a disappointment, if Anna were to be honest with herself.

  "I shouldn't have left you on the boat that night, Anna," Ben went on. "But I did try to call you twice. I guess you slept through it."

  "And what about the girl?" Anna asked, surprising herself. The words tumbled out of her mouth as if they had a will of their own. She'd been sure she didn't care anymore. Obviously she did.

  "What girl?"

  "The one on the boardwalk."

  "She was my cousin. I swear. I asked her to act like my girlfriend when I saw you with Adam, and she kind of ran with it. Pretty pathetic, huh?"

  Anna didn't answer. There was too much information

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  to sift through. She simply stood silently, drawing short lines in the sand with the toe of her sneaker.

  "So, that's it," Ben said. "You don't have to say anything. Believe me, I know I ruined what we had together. Might have had, anyway. You'll never know how sorry I am about that. I won't bother you anymore. At least now I can live with myself." He turned and headed back to the inn parking lot.