Some Like It Hot (2 page)
Then there was Cammie, aka Walking Sex. Cammie was thin but also curvy in every right place ever dreamed up by mankind. Her hair fell in strawberry blond ringlets past her shoulders. Luminous honey-colored eyes were lined with Shiseido black eyeliner and mascara, her pouty lips slicked with Nars lipstick in Masai. Cammie always showed as much creamy skin as possible. At the moment, she wore a sequined Purp7e Agua bikini under a transparent pale pink silk Pia Hallstrom peasant top, plus a pair of Joe's jeans. The jeans were how-low-can-you-go (and screw the fact that the fashion rags were saying low rise was over—Cammie didn't follow fashion, she created it).
In Anna's experience, whenever she was anywhere with Cammie, the eyes of every male in the vicinity gravitated to Cammie like tourists to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Even Ben used to—
Anna winced. She
definitely
did not want to think about Cammie with her boyfriend, Ben Birnbaum. They'd been a couple the year before. Mental pictures of the two of them together made the normally sane and dependable Anna a little bit crazy. Sane and dependable, she feared, could not compete with luscious. And Cammie was luscious.
Ben and Cammie had been together before Anna had first come to California. Today, she'd be seeing him again for the first time in three months; he was
finally
home from Princeton for the summer.
Her stomach did a loop-the-loop in anticipation. There had been such a strange but powerful connection between the two of them right from the very start. They'd actually met on Anna's airline flight to Los Angeles; Ben had impetuously invited her to Jackson Sharpe's wedding that very evening—her first in Los Angeles—at the Griffith Observatory. The night had been so wonderful, until Ben basically abandoned her at a marina after a midnight cruise. He'd later offered an excuse, but Anna had been slow to forgive. Only when Ben had shown up in Las Vegas a couple of months ago when he knew Anna would be there did their relationship get back on track, and only then when they'd vowed to be honest with each other.
“How's it going, ladies?” the saleswoman asked. She had gorgeous red hair and a thick Irish accent—Anna guessed that she was in her late thirties, though in L.A. it was impossible to tell anyone's real age, because nearly everyone had work done. If you hadn't had work done, people assumed you had anyway, which meant that if you were in your late thirties and
looked
like you were late-thirties, everyone assumed you were really forty-five. She was petite in black capris and a sleeveless turtleneck; she had doe eyes, thin lips, and wore her lovely long mane in a retro French twist.
“We want to create something better than Clive Christian No. 1,” Cammie announced, crossing her legs for emphasis.
“Ah, what could be better than Clive Christian?” the saleswoman rhapsodized. “Two thousand dollars an ounce. Spicy citrus top notes, bergamot, orris root, cardamom—”
“Excuse me,” Cammie interrupted, getting up from her white chair to put her hands on Sam's shoulders. “Talk to them, because I'm meeting my boyfriend in, like, five minutes. Don't forget, you're dealing with Jackson Sharpe's daughter.” She kissed Sam's cheek. “It was real.” With an emotionless wave at Anna, she took off, a slew of boutique shopping bags in hand.
“Don't say it,” Sam warned Anna, even as the sales-woman stood by. “She gives new meaning to the term
self-centered.”
Anna smiled. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
She couldn't be mad at Sam for inviting Cammie, because she understood about their friendship. It went back to their childhoods. Anna's best friend from New York, Cynthia Baltres, sometimes rubbed people the wrong way too. Yet there was something deeply important about their history—something special and precious about having a friend who knew you since before you could even write your own name.
Whether it was Anna and Cyn or Sam and Cammie, it was the same timeless thing.
A half hour later, with the assistance of Miss Ireland, 1985, Sam and Anna had created the Jackson Sharpe signature scent—lavender, lemon, and marzipan. Miss Ireland, 1985, explained that Scent Bar's favorite lab would mix some samples, send them over to the Sharpe estate for Jackson's final approval, and then create a limited batch for the charity auction.
“I like it a lot,” Anna told her. She sniffed the back of her wrist again. “Are you going to save a vial for Eduardo?”
“The guy's halfway around the world,” Sam reminded Anna, as she signed a few papers that the saleswoman had given her. “He doesn't need me to give him cologne.”
Sam had recently returned from a long weekend in Paris, visiting Eduardo Muñoz at the Sorbonne. She'd first met him on a winter vacation with Anna to Mexico; Eduardo had been taken with Sam immediately. She'd been wary, though, assuming that any hot guy who paid attention to her had an angle—that he either wanted a role in a Jackson Sharpe movie or had just written the perfect Jackson Sharpe vehicle.
As it turned out, Eduardo was from Peru and neither knew nor cared who Sam was; he'd simply found her beautiful and charming. He loved her ample curves as much as she hated them, which was really, really hard for Sam to accept.
“Didn't you have a good time in France?” Anna asked, as they pushed out of Scent Bar and turned south on La Brea, a broad boulevard that twenty years ago had been gritty and industrial but now was well into gentrification, with pricey boutiques and just-as-pricey restaurants in between the hardware stores and restaurant-supply dealers.
Sam stopped to inspect a turquoise Elegantly Waisted leather belt by Selma Blair in a shop window. “Would that belt give me hippo hips?”
“I take it you don't want to discuss it.”
“Selma is married to Ahmet Zappa, did you know that? Fifty-fifty they'll be divorced by Christmas.”
“I don't know who either of those people are, Sam.”
“Sam! Oh, Sammy!”
Across the street, Anna saw two brunette girls frantically waving in their direction. One of them was actually jumping up and down to get Sam's attention. When the light changed, they ran across La Brea like a pair of Olympic sprinters.
“Merde.”
Sam reached in her bag for her new Maui Jim polarized sunglasses and slipped them on as the light changed and the two girls trotted across the street and up onto the sidewalk. “Jasmine Eckels and Ophelia Berman. Battle stations, battle stations. Prepare for the attack of the prom weenies.”
“Attack of the
what?”
“Sam!” The shorter of the two girls squealed and threw her arms around Sam as if Sam were her long lost sister; then she shook Anna's hand. “Hi, I'm Jazz—short for Jasmine. And this is Fee—short for Ophelia.”
“My parents met doing
Hamlet
at the Utah Shakespearean Festival,” Fee explained to Anna, rolling her eyes. “I always have to explain my name. Anyway, it's better than ‘Oaf.’ I've seen you around school.”
Anna smiled politely. She'd seen them, too, but they weren't in any of her classes. They were both cute but plump. Jazz's eyes were quite close together—it seemed like she'd spackled on a fair amount of makeup to compensate. Her clothes, too, pushed the outer limits of good taste—a short plaid Catholic-schoolgirl skirt fastened with an oversize silver safety pin, a shrunken sleeveless Cardin cashmere shell, and white thigh-high boots. Fee, on the other hand, was quite tall and angular. She wore a red silk shirt unbuttoned and knotted under her bust, about two dozen beaded necklaces, ditto on the bracelets, and a skirt so short it was approaching a loincloth.
“It's so cool running into you, Sam!” Jazz gushed. “Because I was going to call you tonight. About prom! Did you hear that Fee and I are co-chairmen?”
“You betcha.” Sam shifted the strap of her white-with-gold-grommets Hermes bag to her other shoulder and didn't even try to muster false enthusiasm.
“This prom is going to be the most amazing ever,” Fee cried. “We're doing it at the Bel Air Grand Hotel. Isn't that totally awesome?”
“No, it's totally
old,”
Sam replied.
Jazz nodded eagerly. “Old
Hollywood.
Sinatra, Clark Gable, Jane Fonda—”
“Exactly,” Sam interrupted. “No one under the age of, like,
death
goes there.”
Both girls laughed heartily as if Sam had just cracked the world's funniest joke. Then they all had to wait a moment as a dozen noisy Harleys, all piloted by bare-chested gay guys with pierced nipples, roared past. The pause apparently gave Jazz and Fee the chance to recharge their “perky” batteries.
“It's going to be so cool, I swear,” Jazz insisted. She grabbed Sam's hand and held on for dear life. “You're coming, right?”
Sam stared pointedly at Jazz's viselike grip; the girl hastily withdrew her hand.
“Sorry,” Jazz apologized, then geared up for her next frontal assault. “This is our high school's fiftieth prom since 1946—they didn't have them during Vietnam—and I'm sure you wouldn't miss it. Neither would Cammie or your other friends, like Parker and Krishna and Blu—”
“And Dee Young of course, if she becomes more mentally healthy,” Fee put in. “I heard about what happened in Las Vegas. Yikes! I am so planning on visiting her.”
Dee Young was Sam's other longtime best friend. Dee had always been a bit … off, and then when they'd all been in Vegas, she had a nervous breakdown. Currently she was an in-patient at the Ojai Psychiatric Institute, diagnosed as bipolar. Sam had told Anna that Dee was improving, but her release date was uncertain.
“How about you cut the bullshit, Fee,” Sam suggested coldly. “You barely know her.”
“You
had
to bring up Dee, didn't you?” Jazz hissed at Fee. “I
told
you not to.” She took a deep breath and fixed her gaze on Sam. “So, prom?”
Sam shrugged. “I'll get back to you.”
Fee looked as if she'd just gotten word that a close relative had died in a plane crash. “You have to come,” she muttered, eyes on the pavement. “You can't
not
come.”
“Why not?”
The two girls traded an intense look; then Jazz seemed to steel herself. “I'll level with you, Sam. If the coolest girls in the school don't come, then the coolest guys in the school won't come. And if
none
of the coolest kids at school come—”
“We're screwed,” Fee concluded, throwing her hands wide. “Only the losers will show up. We'll go down in history as the pathetic girls that gave the lame-ass fiftieth-anniversary prom.”
“I think prom sounds like fun,” Anna put in.
“Thank you, Anna! See, Sam? She's coming.” Fee looked ready to embrace Anna.
“She didn't say that,” Sam corrected. “She said it sounded like fun.”
“Well … what if we do it for charity?” Jazz offered. “Any charity you want.”
“We did charity last year,” Sam reminded her. “That's why Cammie and I went.”
“Please?” Fee begged. “Pleasepleaseplease? We need you.”
Sam raised her sunglasses to better make eye contact. “You know, Fee, since my friend Anna really was thinking about going, I was starting to think about going. You almost had me. But bringing up Dee and saying that you guys were going to visit her? Come on. You guys wouldn't visit her if I gave you comp tickets to the opening of
Ben-Hur.
That was a low blow. Even for this town. Better luck next time. Have a great prom.”
T
hey ducked into the Insomnia Café on Beverly Boulevard, with its square white front and blocky black INSOMNIA lettering; Sam said it was the best dessert and coffee place close to La Brea. The décor was comfortable—a brown and mustard yellow interior, with framed watercolors for sale on the walls and early Beatles music playing in the background. There were square burgundy couches and maybe twenty-five wooden tables with chairs. At most of these tables sat screen-writer types—baseball caps and two days of beard growth for the guys, dark sweatshirts and black jeans for the girls. The laptop of choice was either an Apple or a Sony Vaio, with nary an Averatec in sight.
Even better than the creative décor was the delicious aroma. The place smelled heavenly, of almond cookies and fresh potato bread. Anna's mouth literally watered as they found the last open table. Meanwhile, Sam kept glancing toward the front door. “What are you doing?” Anna asked.
“Looking to see if the prom weenies followed me.”
A bone-thin out-of-work-actress type with a pierced eyebrow, dreads, and matte red lipstick took their order—espressos and chocolate croissants—and immediately brought them two bottles of spring water.
“You still want to go,” Sam declared with a grin. “I see it in your nauseatingly perfect face.”
“I do,” Anna conceded.
“Why?”
“Well … I'm curious.”
“They don't have proms back in New York?” Sam challenged.
“Of course we do. I think I thought … this might be interesting.”
Sam grinned. “It might be, if you were a cultural anthropologist. You know, they were fine until they brought up Dee.”
Dee had basically had a psychotic breakdown on the same Las Vegas trip where Anna had reunited with Ben. It had been a sign of Fee and Jazz's desperation that they'd tried to wheedle their way into Sam's graces by playing the Dee card. Anna understood how that made Sam feel: used and manipulated. If she knew anything at all about Sam, it was that her friend detested being used.
On the other hand, Anna still thought the idea of the Beverly Hills High School prom was entertaining.
“Let me explain to you why our prom is a joke,” Sam opined. “It's the same shit every year—B-list girls in charge. If they don't get the A-list to come, then their lives are utter and abject failures forevermore. You really want to be part of that tawdry little scene?”
“That's not exactly an embracing attitude,” Anna jibed. “A-list, B-list …”
“You told me you have proms in New York,” Sam scoffed. “Tell me it's not the same thing. I dare you.”
Okay, Anna had to admit that was true. On the West Coast, you were A-list either because you were so hot that you couldn't be anything else or because your parents were movie stars, had their own TV series or talent agency, or ran a studio. Sam was automatically A-list because of her father. Cammie was double-barrel A-list, qualifying both because of her looks
and
because her father was one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood. Dee was A-list because her father was a famous music producer.