American Beauty (12 page)
Danny stopped talking; the room fell silent. Cammie took everything in: the writers, in their late twenties and thirties, sleep-deprived and rumpled; a token female writer (they were always either drop-dead gorgeous or lesbians who had Hollywood Gay Mafia clout, or both). Whiteboards covered in episode beats lined the walls. The center table was a mess—littered with old takeout containers, candy wrappers, and half-consumed bottles of Dasani. Anna saw Danny give Clark a curious look.
“Cammie?” her father inquired calmly, raising his dark eyebrows slightly in annoyance. He leaned back in a Herman Miller Aeron metal-and-mesh chair, with his black A. Testonis by Norvegese shoes up on the table. He was dressed more casually than usual, in gray slacks and a pink Budd’s sport shirt with French cuffs. “This must be important, since you’re interrupting a staff that makes roughly ten million dollars a season.”
“Father.” She was deliberately formal. “I need to talk to you.”
“After this meeting.”
“Now.”
You’ve taught me well, Dad. I’ve learned from the best
. “Dad, you’ve given me no choice.” Cammie felt the venom pump through her. “You’ve ignored me, avoided me, and hidden from me. Not today. I want some answers.”
She took a step toward him, and saw that all the writers were now staring at her. No one challenged Clark Sheppard like this. They were watching the equivalent of the sun rising in the west and setting in the east.
Good. Maybe you guys can learn something from me
.
“You. My mother. Sam’s mother.”
“Cammie, I told you. Later. Go shopping on the Strand. I’ll take you to lunch, and we can talk as long as you’d like.” He grinned hard and looked at his writers for affirmation, but everyone just stared at him, dumbstruck. “All these people are witnesses.”
Cammie folded her arms. “We can definitely do lunch. But we’re also going to do this. I know you were screwing Sam’s mother. The police report says you were all on the boat the night that mom died. So it’s time you told the truth. A simple yes or no will suffice. Did you kill Mom?”
A
nna opened her eyes the next morning to find Ben staring into hers. He blinked quickly and then pulled away, as if he’d been caught doing something.
“Well,” she mustered. “Good morning.”
Did that sound faintly British? She winced at her own words.
“Morning,” he mumbled, stretching out one long arm. His bare, tan, muscular chest beckoned. He’d slept last night just in his green Everglade-colored Patagonia Capilene boxers. The ones that had never come off.
She moved closer—wary, tense. “What time is it?” The sunlight was streaming through the window.
“Ten. You’re late for school.” He kissed the top of her head.
“No class for seniors this week. We just had a final paper for humanities and—”
“Let me guess. You turned it in last week.”
“Last month, actually.”
Because I wasn’t sure when you’d be home
, she mentally added, not daring to say it aloud in light of their present state.
I didn’t want to have to do it if you were home
.
He stroked her head. “I could definitely get used to waking up next to you.”
As what, cuddly roommates?
Anna wondered if she was overreacting. It was maddening not to know—surely every couple had a glitch now and then. But to sleep in the same bed and not have sex … it wasn’t like they’d been married for twenty years. She felt certain that if this was their first time, or if he was with a new girl to whom he was wildly attracted, he would not have been able to restrain himself the night before.
And yet he had. Apparently, easily.
“Got plans for today?” He ran his knuckles softly along the side of her neck, then shifted his weight so that his lips could brush hers.
Now? Now suddenly he wanted to make love?
Hadn’t she read somewhere that men preferred sex in the morning, while women preferred—
That line of thought was interrupted by a sizzling kiss. She couldn’t help but respond. So … this meant everything was okay, didn’t it? They were good.
She pulled him close and was gratified to hear him sigh in her ear. “Anna.”
“Anna!”
Another male voice—much louder—called from downstairs. “You home?”
Damn
.
She pushed away from Ben, her stomach knotted under the dusty rose vermicelli silk sheets. “It’s my father.”
“Oops?” he asked with a half-smile.
Anna felt her cheeks growing red. “I have never been in this situation before. I don’t … I’m not …”
“I’ll play it however you want,” Ben offered.
“I’ll go downstairs and talk to him,” she decided, as she went to her closet and wrapped herself in a Ralph Lauren emerald silk robe.
“Tell him he doesn’t need his shotgun. I’ll leave peacefully.”
“Besides, you didn’t even get a chance to ravish me yet,” Anna pointed out in what she hoped was a light tone. As in: hint, hint. Then she headed out of her room and down the long, carpeted staircase with the polished brass banister.
“Dad?”
“Anna? I’m in the kitchen, sweetie!”
Anna padded into the kitchen. Her father was at the table, nibbling on one of the rosewater brioches from Arminee’s Bakery on Rodeo Drive, flipping through the paper. He looked handsome; tall, lanky and boyish, and much younger than the midfortysomething Anna knew him to be. He wore black Ronin cargo pants and a Mongolian cashmere sweater in a rich camel that Anna remembered from when she was an elementary school student in Manhattan. The sweater reminded her of one of the many dictates in the apocryphal
This Is How We Do Things
Big Book: Don’t buy cheap.
“Great to see you,” he said, motioning to an empty chair. “Coffee’s brewing—push the button on the Krups, will you?”
She was hoping for an opening to mention her overnight visitor who was still upstairs. “I’d love some coffee. So would—”
“I’m surprised you’re not in school,” Jonathan interrupted. “Or did you decide just to blow off the week before graduation? Come to think of it, that’s what I did.”
A discreet chime signaled that the coffee was ready; Mimi, their cook, didn’t come in until eleven, and Consuela had the morning off.
“No class this week.” She got out two of her dad’s new Laura Smith original hand-painted ceramic mugs—he’d had them done in a Wall Street theme, with huge bulls about to devour cowering bears—and poured them each a cup. Jonathan took his coffee black.
“So what are you going to do with the day?”
“I’m not sure.” Anna was suddenly nervous about telling him that she had a guy in her bedroom. “I was thinking that maybe—”
“We’d drive up on the Angeles Crest highway toward Mountain High,” came a cheerful male voice from the doorway.
Anna whirled. Ben stood—fully dressed, thank God—with his arms on the doorjambs. Smiling.
Jonathan seemed to bide his time with a long sip of coffee. “Ben.”
“Nice to see you again.” Ben eyed the Krups. “Mind if I have some?”
Her father nodded, so Anna poured Ben some coffee. Meanwhile, he sat down, apparently as comfortable as if he was in his own kitchen. Then her dad’s gaze shifted from Anna, in her robe, to fully dressed Ben, and back again.
He raised one cool eyebrow. “Nice to see you again, Ben.”
Okay, that was good. Anna knew that with her father, you could never tell how he’d react. One day he was the hippie, pot-smoking, “call-me-Jonathan” dad; the next he was the uptight money manager in a six-thousand-dollar hand-tailored suit.
“So.” Jonathan began in a conversational tone, “did you spend the night here with my daughter?
“I did,” Ben acknowledged, setting his coffee on the table and looking her father in the eye.
Silence. Anna felt sick to her stomach. She was about to get busted for bringing her boyfriend home for sex, when no such activity had even occurred.
“I … I didn’t know you’d be home,” Anna stammered. “That is, I should have asked if … I mean—”
“When I was your age, my parents would
never
have let me have a girlfriend stay over,” Jonathan recalled. “Of course, that was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.”
“This isn’t a casual thing,” Ben explained. Anna felt him put a hand atop her forearm. The touch made her feel positively unsettled. It was the gesture of a lover. But were they still lovers?
“I know that. You two met when? New Year’s? You’re doing better than two-thirds of the relationships in Los Angeles.”
As Jonathan rubbed his chin—obviously considering the facts on the ground: that his younger daughter had brought a guy home for a sleepover—Anna studied him. He was a handsome man. His vivid blue eyes sparkled in his roguish, tanned face. Even the spiky haircut suited him. She’d never considered it before, but she realized now that he’d probably had a lot of girlfriends when he was her age. Was there someone before her mother who he had been madly in love with? What had his hopes been, his dreams? Strange, to think about your parents as real people.
“Ben is welcome here anytime,” her father declared. “Just one thing, Anna. Don’t get the idea that I’m going to be happy if I come down to breakfast and find a different guy at the table every week.”
Okay, that was way, way over the humiliation line.
“I would
never
do that.” Anna tightened the belt on her robe.
“She would never do that,” Ben echoed putting his hand on Anna’s back.
Her father laughed heartily and got up from the table. “I believe her. But I’m just being a dad here. Give me a little credit. I’ve got some work I can do at the office.” He looked pointedly at his shiny gold Rolex Datejust with the steel-and-gold oyster band and sapphire crystal. “It’s ten-thirty. I’ll be back by … three?”
The blush spread up Anna’s neck and into her cheeks. There was nothing she could do to stop it. No matter how you cut it, her father had just basically said that he would clear out so that she and Ben could retire upstairs and do what he thought they’d done the night before.
She decided she was grateful. They’d actually just been on the verge of—
“Mr. Percy?”
“Jonathan.”
“Jonathan,” Ben corrected himself. You don’t have to leave on my account. I … have to get to work, too.”
What?
Anna’s jaw dropped, and then she immediately put it back into place. He hadn’t said anything about having to be at Trieste. What would they want him to do on a Monday morning? Mop the spots on the floor that the custodians had missed the night before? And wasn’t the club closed on Mondays? What was going on? Had he had a sudden attack of the nerves just because her father had arrived? No, it was more than that. She
knew
it. Her cold eyes met Ben’s.
“I checked my messages right before I came downstairs,” he explained, his eyes holding Anna’s. “I’ve gotta get going. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
Anna doubted that was possible. She smiled a tight smile, kissed him goodbye far away from his lips on his cheek, as he promised he’d call her later. Then, feeling as if her heart was breaking, she watched him walk away.
The moment Ben was out of sight of Anna’s house—past the corner of Foothill Drive and Lomitas—he pulled the Merc to the curb. He had a call to return, immediately. It went straight to her voice mail.
“Yeah, hi, it’s Ben. Stop by where I work this afternoon. Trieste. Come at three-thirty. I have a management meeting at four. See you.”
He clicked off and started the engine again. It was a glorious day in Los Angeles, bright sunshine and eighty degrees, with that cloudless, gleaming blue sky you never saw anywhere except right up against the Pacific. Off to the east, there had been brush fires burning for the last few days over near San Bernadino—a typical occurrence in California in early summer—but the gentle onshore breeze from the Pacific was pushing all the smoke toward Palm Springs instead of back toward Los Angeles.
It was a day to feel good, but instead he felt like shit. Why did everything have to get so damn complicated?
C
ammie leaned back in Danny Bluestone’s office chair, put her fuchsia Manolo Blahnik stilettos up on his desk, and waited for her father’s grand entrance. She had no doubt he was about to make it.
Studios were notorious for providing their writers with low-rent furniture, and Danny’s windowless office was no exception. The show had provided its co-executive producer with a battered wooden desk and desktop computer, a gray faux-leather seat that was the epitome of used, and a mismatched dark yellow plaid upholstered chair that was supposed to be comfortable but looked like puke. He had a whiteboard on one of the walls and two large rock ’n’ roll posters taped to another (Tom Waits and Nine Inch Nails). The other two walls were bare, save for a brown pressboard bookcase loaded with scripts on every shelf.
The wait for Clark felt interminable. What to do, what to do, what to do to pass the time? She opened one of Danny’s drawers. It was full of half-written scripts and memos from her dad. She was about to read the one on
Hermosa Beach
’s vacation policy for its writers—that should be really short—when in strode her father.
“You have a helluva nerve.”
“Thank you.”
“Never—and I mean never—pull a stunt like that again, Cammie.”
“It was the only way to get your attention,” she shot back hotly.
“I don’t respond well to public humiliation.”
“No shit.” She hesitated a strategic moment, then softened her tone a bare notch. “Look, you didn’t leave me much choice. You didn’t answer my calls when you were in Europe. You’ve been hiding out in a bungalow at the hotel, so … can we talk now?”
“The sad thing is, you think you know everything about everything, when you don’t know a goddamn thing about anything.” He kicked the door shut, then sat in the ugly yellow-puke chair. “You want to talk Cammie? Let’s talk.”
“So why the disappearing act? You
knew
I was trying to reach you.”
“You’ll read about it in the trades tomorrow. Here’s the deal.” Clark drummed his fingers on his pants legs. “Paradigm made a huge offer to acquire the agency last week. Strictly hush-hush and strictly off the record until someone leaked it to
Variety
. Margaret and I were meeting with their people in Zurich—we figured that was the best way to stay out of the public eye.”