Back in Black (2 page)

They hadn't been the only Oscar attendees in Thibiant. Sam had pointed out Mena Suvari and Elisha Cuthbert and had even introduced Anna to Elise West, a major executive at one of the big movie studios.

After such pampering, Sam had insisted that lunch be pure and healthy. She'd taken them to dine at the Inn of the Seventh Ray up in Topanga Canyon. Located in a dell amid the Santa Monica mountains, the restaurant featured outdoor seating and a menu that included macrobiotic offerings. Sam had ordered a wholly vegetarian meal that had turned out to be remarkably delicious. Then they'd driven back to Beverly Hills, taken a quick swim in the Sharpe pool, and dressed for the Oscars.

“
Oh my God, is that who I think it is?!
”

The screeching voice was loud enough to stand out from the crowd, and it made Anna turn, only to realize that the young woman with the amazingly adenoidal vocal cords seemed to be looking directly at her.

Anna looked behind her, but no one stood there.

“It
is
her!” the screaming girl's friend cried, grabbing the first girl's arm in her excitement. Then she snapped Anna's picture. “Hey! Can we get your autograph?”

Anna had no idea what to say or do. But fortunately the crowd's attention, including that of her two admirers (mistaken as they might have been), shifted to the woman alighting from the latest limo.

“Sandra! Sandra! Over here!”

Anna turned to see a glowing brunette step out of a white limousine.

“Yves Saint Laurent,” Sam decreed of Sandra's green brocade halter-top gown as she returned to Anna's side. “Fifteen grand. Know why she's here now?”

“That's obvious, Sam: for the awards.”

“Of course for the awards. But why would she get here at four o'clock when the show doesn't start until six? It's 'cause she's got a new movie that's opening in three weeks, and she wants E! to do a really long interview with her. If she arrives early, there's a better chance she won't be upstaged by someone like Nicole Kidman.”

Anna was bemused. Who would have imagined putting so much thought into when you arrived at the Oscars? But Sam was evidently right, pointing out the arrivals of Penelope Ann Miller, Mischa Barton, and Carmen Electra in rapid succession. Anna, who spent more time with the poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning than she did at her local Blockbuster, didn't recognize any of them.

“Ready for the show?” Sam asked.

Anna looked at her watch. The awards didn't start for another hour and forty-five minutes. Sam saw the baffled expression on her face.

“I mean the preshow show,” Sam explained. “Let's get drinks and find a place to sit. I promise you that in sixty minutes, it's going to be more crowded on this red carpet than the subway in Manhattan at rush hour, everybody looking faaaabulous, darling. It'll be a hoot, you'll see.”

An hour later, the red carpet was essentially impassable, a celebrity-strewn madhouse. Anna and Sam stood near the north-side bleachers, away from the late afternoon sun. As they took it all in, Sam provided the running fashion commentary.

“Julia! Who's home with the twins tonight?” a reporter yelled as Julia Roberts edged down the carpet. Her answer was nothing more than her famous wide smile, perfectly framed by a simple, understated black dress with a sheer bodice.

“Carolina Herrera,” Sam discerned. “Designed for her.”

To Anna's left, a TV producer was trying to lasso a pop star whom even Anna recognized for an interview.

“Britney! Come be interviewed by Melissa Rivers! Melissa would love an interview!”

Britney Spears and her escort moved toward the hostess, who was in the midst of an interview with an actor whom Sam told Anna was Antonio Banderas.

“It's like a shark tank,” Anna observed, watching the insanity unfold.

“During a feeding frenzy,” Sam added. “Celebrity heaven.”

“Wait, that's what's-her-name!” a teenage girl with a mouthful of braces boomed to her friend. She thrust a finger in Anna's direction. “We love you!” she yelled.

“We totally love you!” her friend echoed.

Anna turned to Sam, slightly embarrassed. “I have no idea who they think I am.”

Sam waved at the girls. “Me neither, so just smile and wave and they'll be on to the next.”

Feeling ridiculous, Anna gave the girls a small wave, which made them grab each other and squeal.

Sure enough, as Jennifer Aniston got out of her limo, the girls' focus shifted. After that, Sam ticked the names off of other arriving celebrities: Tom Hanks. Mena Suvari in Dolce & Gabbana. Julie Delpy in Dior.

“Wait, there's my dad.” Sam jerked her chin toward a gold limo that had just pulled up to the carpet. “Which means that even now, the Stepmother from Hell is probably on her cell, cooing to her evil spawn.”

“You can't hate a new baby, Sam,” Anna chided.

“Wanna bet?”

Anna let it drop. Sam was just nervous on her father's behalf, she decided.

“My theory,” Sam continued, “is that Poppy's we-need-our-own-limo thing happened after she found out I invited you. She figured that leggy-blond-patrician-beauty thing of yours would make her look like the overripe, undereducated melon ball she really is.”

“That's kind of harsh, Sam. She just had a baby.”

“Unwritten Hollywood rule: Stars don't come out in public until they've lost their baby weight. Every ounce. What do you think of the limo? The Pop-Tart insisted on gold. She had them paint it just for tonight so that it would match her gold satin-and-velvet Versace gown, designed to hide the extra fifteen pounds on her ass.”

“Come on, Sam, give her a break.”

Sam grinned wickedly. “Imagine Stepmommy Dearest's dilemma: Miss the Academy Awards where her husband might actually win, or show up looking like a cow. She chose the heifer look. Before you tell me to chill out, remember that Poppy said the best thing I could do for my father tonight was not show up.”

Anna winced. “Ouch.” She knew that Sam felt neglected by her father, especially now that Ruby Hummingbird was on the scene. Now she had to share him not only with his child bride but also with a new baby. But Anna stayed silent. Discretion, she knew, was the better part of most things, including friendship.

Since Anna had moved from New York to Beverly Hills on New Year's Eve, Sam was just about the only real friend she'd made. Here in the land of vipers masquerading as people, friendship was something that Anna knew should be guarded at all costs. Sometimes honesty was not at all the best policy.

Outside the Well-Bred-East-Coast-WASP Box

E
ach arriving celebrity had been greeted with Oscar-worthy accolades, but the reception for America's most beloved movie star, Jackson Sharpe, was what Anna had imagined would be reserved for conquering heroes returning from battle. The crowded bleachers erupted with cheers and applause. Every TV camera crew rushed to him. Even the other movie stars on the red carpet seemed to stop in their tracks to take in the image of the great one himself as the gold limousine pulled up at the edge of the red carpet. Jackson—tall, rangy, and with his colored-by-Raymond-but-nobody-had-any-idea chestnut brown hair swept straight back, wearing an Armani tuxedo with a quirky purple bow tie and cummerbund—stepped out, then helped his young wife from the limo.

Poppy took his arm. The fans screamed even louder.

“What do you think?” Sam asked Anna, making a face somewhere between a smile and a smirk.

“I wish my friend Cyn could see this,” Anna told her.

In fact, Anna was tempted to open her Nokia cell phone right then and call her best friend from New York, Cynthia Baltres. She'd long ago decided that Sam would adore Cyn, who was an over-the-top kind of girl with a great sense of the absurd. Cyn loved wild and crazy antics at scenes like this one. In fact, conservative Anna had been known to live vicariously through Cyn, who was willing to test life's limits.

One of the many reasons that Anna had chosen to move to California and live with her father was to test some limits of her own. That had happened quicker than she'd ever imagined. On the plane from New York, she'd met the most fabulous guy, Ben Birnbaum. Theirs had been the kind of instant attraction that fueled the sentiments of so many of the pre-post-modern poems she loved. Ben had been her first … her first
everything
. But now Ben was back at Princeton, where he was a freshman. She was in California. And Anna didn't know what they were anymore, since they'd parted so badly.

She'd had other boyfriends since Ben. But somehow, she kept thinking about him, coming back to him. Maybe it was only because he'd been her first. Or maybe … well, maybe it was more.

Anna sighed. Here she and Sam were, standing at the edge of the red carpet at the Academy Awards, gazing at the world's biggest movie stars each taking their moment in the sun. Millions of people all over the world would have killed to switch places with her. And she was in overanalysis overdrive.
Stop
, she told herself.
Think later. Live in the moment. Enjoy this
.

“I can understand that you wish Cyn could see this,” Sam agreed. “I wish Eduardo could, too.”

Eduardo Munoz was Sam's boyfriend. He was tall, dark, handsome, rich, brilliant, and international. Shockingly—to Sam, anyway—he truly thought Sam was gorgeous. They had met at the Las Casitas resort in Mexico back in February. He'd taken her horseback riding on the beach and then to an open-air lunch on an island. He'd shown up in Los Angeles to see her instead of flying back to France for school and had sent her roses every Wednesday, to celebrate their having met on a Wednesday. But right now, Eduardo was studying international relations at a university in Paris, so he and Sam had a long-distance relationship.

“Have you talked to him?” Anna asked.

“All the time. By phone. But it leaves something to be desired. Actually, a lot to be desired. He's nine thousand miles away right now. Anyway, tell me the Popsicle doesn't look like a fat sausage in that dress,” Sam chortled gleefully. Anna saw Poppy hanging on to Jackson, who'd stopped to sign some autographs for fans. “Star Jones will have a field day!”

“Be nice,” Anna chided.

“Why be nice when someone could say the same thing about me?” Sam sucked in her gut and turned back to Anna. “I'm so freaking bloated. Why did I eat all that salted popcorn last night?”

“You look great,” Anna assured her with complete sincerity. Sam's dress really was extremely flattering. In a place like New York City, where you didn't get points deducted for each ounce you were over the norm, Sam might even have been described this night as dazzling.

“You'd say I looked great even if my tits were shaking hands with my navel.”

Anna laughed. “Gee, I think I'd offer more …
support
than that.”

“Your problem is that you think good manners are more important than the truth.” Sam bared her Chiclet-white, Rembrandt-enhanced veneers for Anna's inspection. “No lip gloss on my teeth?”

“Perfection.”

“Liar.” Sam pointed at Anna. “Now you, you bitch goddess, look like a young Grace Kelly. Which if you weren't my friend would make me hate the water you walk on.”

Anna made a face. “I'm assuming that's a compliment?” “You are so hopeless,” Sam sighed. “You probably have no idea what Grace Kelly looked like.”

Anna admitted that she did, but only because she'd been to Monaco for a state dinner at the palace where the classic American actress had once been a princess. She had never been big on movies, current or retro. Literature, yes—American, British, and French. But movies had never been that important to her. They'd always seemed somehow … disposable.

“Okay, you know Gwyneth Paltrow?” Sam asked. “She's standing over to the left by those reporters. And you know Kate Hudson? She's with her mother, Goldie Hawn, about fifty feet to our right. Goldie's the one in the red dress. Check them out.”

Anna did. “Okay.”

“Cross them. That's you, with blonder hair.” Sam gestured toward the crowd. “Those girls already thought you were someone-or-other. You have that look.”

Before Anna could say that she seriously doubted that, Jackson Sharpe was in front of them. His smile was broad, but Anna thought he looked a little bit worried.

“Sam. Wow, sweetie, you look great.” He kissed his daughter's cheek. “Hey, Anna, how's it going?”

“Fine,” Anna replied. “This is fascinating.”

“I hate wearing the damn tux, frankly,” Jackson confided.

“Stop complaining, Dad,” Sam instructed, then straightened the bow tie of his made-to-order Armani tux.

A few feet away, Poppy was engrossed in a conversation with a very pregnant, much older woman in black maternity clothes. Anna thought she recognized her as the mother of one of the students at her high school and wondered momentarily if the woman had taken fertility drugs.

“Nervous, Dad?”

Jackson gave them his best movie-star grin. “Razzle-dazzle ’em, babe. See you from the stage. Where are you sitting?”

“Second tier,” Sam reported.

“Aww.” Jackson's smile didn't budge. “If I win, next year I'll get you downstairs.”

“When you win,” she corrected him.

Jackson gave his daughter and Anna a big thumbs-up, then went to get Poppy. A moment later, Anna saw them both corralled by a reporter from the E! channel.

“Notice how Stepmommy Dearest is standing half behind my father to make her hips looks smaller on TV?” Sam pointed out. “What a hoot.” She turned to Anna, frowning at the red carpet at the same time. During the last five minutes, it had grown noticeably more crowded. “Okay, this is the part I hate. We walk the plank. The media scrutinizes me. They all suck.”

“Want me to hold your hand?” Anna teased.

Sam wagged a finger at Anna. “Just remember that someday when I'm a famous director and Sofia Coppola's Q rating is in the toilet and I've just come back from two weeks at Le Spa and I'm to-die-for skinny, they'll all be falling at my feet.”

“I'll remember,” Anna promised. She was a little nervous herself, having already been mistaken for a celebrity. She definitely didn't want to have her friends in New York calling to say that they'd seen her interviewed by Star Jones.