Blonde Ambition (10 page)
“Great.” Clark beamed at Cammie. “Glad to see that you two are getting along better.” He disappeared down the hall. Mia followed him.
Cammie sat again. This could not be happening. Her life could not be this out of control. She spied the small framed photo of her mother that she kept on her bedside and thought that if she were still alive, she’d certainly be planning a great eighteenth birthday party for her daughter. She picked up the photo and looked at it closely; it had been taken at her sixth birthday party. Her mother had her arm around Cammie’s narrow shoulders. They wore matching dresses and matching smiles. But now Cammie was about to turn eighteen; such an important birthday, with no mom at her side, and the memories of her that she did have ebbed with each passing year.
A tear rolled down Cammie’s cheek; she fisted it away. God, look what she’d come to, sitting alone in her room crying about her life. No fucking way. She was a gorgeous Hollywood princess. She’d simply throw herself a gorgeous Hollywood birthday party. She’d get Dee to help her; one shared Kabbalah class and she’d have the girl eating out of her hand again. And she’d definitely invite Sam and Adam. If they were a couple, she’d flirt with him outrageously to teach Sam a lesson.
And then, to show her who was boss, maybe she’d even invite Anna Percy.
Well, maybe not.
D
ublin’s was a rowdy Irish bar on the Strand in the town of Hermosa Beach, just a short walk to the actual beach. It served only beer, ale, and whiskey from Ireland and featured massive bowls of peanuts on every table. Customers shelled them and threw the shells onto the sawdust-covered floor. A huge dartboard in the back of the place featured Prince Charles as the bull’s-eye. In another corner an old-fashioned jukebox blared vintage rock.
Anna sat next to Danny Bluestone at a long table of people who worked on
Hermosa Beach.
They were a boisterous group, going on and on about—what else— their show, other shows, other shows they had worked on, and who was the biggest son of a bitch in the business. Though Clark had departed the production offices after dinner, Anna had opted to stay and Clark had encouraged her to do so. He told her to listen, listen, and listen some more and report back to him. When she needed a ride home, she should call a certain limo service and bill it to Apex.
So for quite a while she’d stood out of camera range and watched some of the show actually being shot. She was surprised at how the dialogue was cut into such small chunks, then the director would call, “Cut,” and the actors would wander off or get their makeup redone or change outfits while the next shot was set up. The process was rather dull, to tell the truth.
Clark had left Anna with a shooting script. Scenes were marked in the order in which they’d be shot, which wasn’t the order of the scenes in the script. In the episode currently filming there were three scenes in the hotel lobby: one at the beginning of the show, one near the middle, and one at the end. All three scenes were shot back-to-back. The actors had to change costumes, but evidently that was easier and cheaper than shooting the show in chronological order.
As Anna looked down the table, she noticed there was a definite pecking order to the seating. The actors were sitting together. The guy who played Cruise looked a little like Ben but was darker and not as tall. Ben. She realized she’d barely thought of him all afternoon.
The waitress set four pitchers of ale on the long table. Danny reached for Anna’s glass and filled it. “This is going to be the best ale you’ve ever tasted,” he assured her.
Anna had no reason to argue since the truth was she’d never tasted any kind of ale before. She took a small sip through the foam. It tasted like urine, or what she imagined urine would taste like were she actually to drink it. She’d read about certain African tribes who drank their own as a curative for—
“What’s the verdict?” Danny asked, taking a long pull.
“Interesting,” Anna replied, trying to sound upbeat. Danny threw his head back, laughing. “‘Interesting?’ The kiss of death. When an exec says that a certain plot point is interesting, you know you’re about to get a new asshole. You hate it.”
Anna nodded. “Sorry.”
“Well, I promise not to make you chug. But I do propose a toast.” Danny lifted his glass, so she did, too. “Here’s to the new eyes and ears of Clark Sheppard, and what a major improvement over Clark’s they are.” He clinked his glass against hers.
Anna took the smallest of sips. “You make it sound like I’m Clark’s spy.”
“You are.”
“No, I’m not,” Anna protested. “I would never … That’s ridiculous.”
“Don’t be offended. The guy’s the biggest son of a bitch in show business. One time a director’s mother died in the middle of a shoot. When the director took time off to go to the funeral, Clark fired him.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wasn’t there. But that’s what I heard.” Danny took off his New York Yankees baseball cap and plopped it playfully on Anna’s head. “Anyway, the notes you gave me on Alexandra were really helpful, you know.” He cocked his head at her and grinned. “That cap never looked so good.”
Anna tipped the hat lower on her forehead. “So, Danny. Do you like writing for TV?”
“I like the money,” he answered. “I drive nice cars. I go on nice vacations. I send my younger brother nice presents for Hanukkah. But actually I’m writing a spec in my copious free time.”
“Spec?” Anna echoed.
“A film no one is paying you to write,” Danny translated, “after which your agent tries to sell it. It’s tough, though. I work on
Hermosa Beach
six days a week in a good week—often until nine, ten at night. And I’ve been at it since early June.”
“What’s your movie about?”
“A man in pain searching for something to believe in,” Danny quipped.
Anna nodded, trying to look solemn. “Ah, man against himself. How archetypal.”
“I can’t even spell
archetypal.
Anyway, college guy hitches around the country, then around the world, yadda, yadda. College guy ends up in the Peace Corps. No one will make it. Not sexy enough. But dumb me, it’s the story I want to tell.”
Anna was touched. “Well, if it’s the story you want to tell, then it’s not dumb.”
He stared into his ale as if it was an oracle. “Truth is, it would make a better novel than a movie. That’s what I’d really like to do: chuck all this, go live in a garret in Paris, and write it. Am I a cliché or what?” He sipped his ale. “What about you, Anna?”
She shrugged. “Finishing high school, starting at Yale next fall.”
Danny almost spat his ale. “You’re still in
high school?
” “Unfortunately.”
“I thought for sure you were a college intern. Wow.” He shook his head. “You don’t seem like you’re in high school.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Hey, you!” The actress who played Alexandra— Pegasus Patton—slid into a chair next to Anna that had just been vacated by one of the production assistants. She waved her hand in Anna’s face. Her nails were no longer long and vermilion. Now they were short with no polish. “Are you responsible for this?”
“Not directly,” Anna hedged.
“Bullshit.” The girl leaned closer and blew boozy breath on Anna’s face. “You’re Clark’s spy, right? They told me Clark’s spy was some trust fund princess from the Upper East Side.”
“I am not Clark Sheppard’s spy,” Anna insisted all over again. “I’m his
intern.
”
She waved a dismissive hand. “I do not appreciate having my character fucked with by some little intern, understandez-vous?”
“Allez vous faire enculer, et vite, s’il vous plaît,”
Anna said in an apologetic tone, with an impeccable Parisian accent. Which roughly and politely translated to:
Go have sex with yourself, and quickly, please,
something that Anna would never have said in English but that in French sounded fabulous and not very obscene at all.
“Yeah, I like it that way, too,” the actress agreed, pretending she understood what Anna had said. She got up and wove away.
“What’d you tell her?” Danny asked.
“Danny. When you go to Paris to write the great American novel, how are you going to cope if you can’t speak the language?” Anna teased.
“I don’t know. Maybe you’ll be there to translate for me.”
Anna smiled mysteriously and tried another sip of her ale. It seemed a bit less pissy. “Blue Suede Shoes” came on the jukebox—the Carl Perkins original version. Anna didn’t know it, but she liked the beat. Some people down at the other end of the table got up to dance.
Danny watched the dancers for a moment. “Don’t suppose you know how to jitterbug, Anna?”
“Actually, at finishing school one summer we learned everything from how to curtsy properly to every kind of interaction that might involve music.” To illustrate, Anna held her arms up as if ballroom dancing.
“Finishing school?”
Anna nodded gravely. “Sure.”
“We who?”
“Upper East Side trust fund princesses. What about you? Where’d you learn?”
“Living room. My mom.” Danny took Anna’s hand. Together they headed for Dublin’s small dance floor. As Anna walked away, she could hear her cell phone ring in her purse. She knew she should answer it. But really, all she wanted to do was live in the moment, have fun, and jitterbug with Danny.
Everything and everyone else could just wait. Even Ben.
“T
hat’s all right, that’s okay, you’ll be working for us someday!”
Approximately twenty miles north of Hermosa Beach—at the same time that Anna was jitterbugging with Danny—the fans of Beverly Hills High’s basketball team were chanting fervently, having slummed it north on the crowded 405 freeway to root against the home team of Birmingham High School in Van Nuys.
Van Nuys. Meaning area code 818. Meaning
the valley.
Meaning the San Fernando Valley, the vast flat suburban wasteland directly over the big hills that fortunately walled it off it from real places like Beverly Hills and Brentwood and Santa Monica. The valley was fifty square miles of boredom, always twenty degrees hotter or ten degrees colder than the rest of Los Angeles. The pollution was insufferable, the restaurants detestable, the clubs passé before they even opened. Los Angeles was famous for Beverly Hills and Hollywood. The valley was famous for its pornography industry.
As for Van Nuys, it skidded dangerously between lower-middle and middle class—the students on the home court side of the gym reflected these demographics. When Cammie gazed across the basketball court toward their fans, her eyes met an array of fashion disasters. Plus the Van Nuys girls were so fat! Yet even the fat ones were in skintight jeans and heels—like they were proud—and dipping talon-length fingernails into paper plates full of greasy nachos.
So
gross.
Sam had invited Cammie to come to the game with her, saying that they hadn’t seen each other much during the week. That was true, and that was the only reason Cammie deigned to sit on a hard bleacher seat in a high school she’d vowed never to set foot in, watching tall boys in baggy shorts attempt to throw an orange ball through a cord net. She hadn’t hung out with Sam in a couple of days.Though she was loath to admit it, she missed Sam. And she thought she might be able to steer the conversation around to her birthday party and make Sam feel guilty as hell.
“That’s all right, that’s okay, you’ll be working for us someday!”
The BHH chant went up again, provoking boos from the Van Nuys fans. Cammie half worried that one of the Van Nuys gangbangers would pull out a nine-millimeter Glock and start firing. Then she realized that was what the metal detectors at the doors were supposed to prevent.
“Thanks for coming on this excursion,” Sam told Cammie. “When was the last time you were over here in the valley?”
Cammie thought for a moment. “Never. I’m allergic.” Sam laughed. “It isn’t that bad.”
“Yuh, Sam, it is. Why are you here, anyway? I didn’t know you were a basketball fan.”
Sam flushed for a millisecond, which made Cammie very suspicious.
“What?” Cammie continued. “Is there a guy on the team you want to take home from the game?”
“No!” Sam retorted.
Cammie smiled. That “no” had come too quickly. She wasn’t Clark Sheppard’s daughter for nothing: sometimes “no” meant “maybe,” and “maybe” meant “yes.” And sometimes “no” definitely meant “yes.” Like now.
But cheers from the Van Nuys side obliterated whatever Cammie was planning to say—the Van Nuys center had just sunk a free throw to put his team ahead by two points. There were less than ten seconds left to go in the fourth quarter, and Beverly Hills was clearly heading for defeat. But the hundreds of students and fans who had driven their Beemers, Masaratis, and Z Roadsters over the hill for this experience weren’t deterred. Most of them had an ulterior motive for coming to the game: the post-game party.
Before Beverly Hills could inbound the ball under their own basket, Adam signaled the referee for a timeout so the team could talk things over. Cammie, fist under her chin, watched them. Adam Flood looked surprisingly good in baggy satin shorts. He had great definition in his upper arms, too. He was quite cute, albeit in a Midwestern hick sort of way.
“Hey, you guys!” Dee headed toward them, her Brooklyn guitar player, Stevie, in tow. “Sorry we’re late.” She plopped down next to Cammie.
Stevie sat next to her. “We were otherwise detained.” He smirked.
Dee beamed at him. He leaned in and kissed her. Hard. Dee kissed him back. Their hands were all over each other.
“Kids, if you wanted seconds, you should have stayed on at the hotel,” Cammie said sweetly. “There’s only ten seconds left.”
“We’ll head back later,” Stevie said, his hand squeezing Dee’s thigh.
Well, well, well, Cammie thought. Look at our little Dee. Perhaps she’d finally ended her skein of falling for guys who always turned out to be gay. Or not.
The horn sounded to end the time-out, and the two teams filed back onto the court. The Van Nuys cheerleading squad yelled and hollered for their team. Cammie laughed. Their girls looked so ridiculous. At BHH, cheerleading was somewhere in the same social stratum as swine raising.