Oh! You Pretty Things (12 page)

JJ tells them there's spiked lavender lemonade on the balcony and propels them away with a broad palm on each of their lower backs.

“He's so great,” Megan says with a sigh. “And now I want some of that lemonade.”

“Boof, you know it's all PBR and Shasta out there. Maybe a box of Franzia.”

“As if you'd let that travesty unfold.”

“Well, there's the sangria I made. And there's Stone Pale Ale. But there's no
lavande
-spiked French lemonade.”

Megan laughs. “Sangria's even better.”

“It kind of is,” I agree, then check our progress.

There's a wide white ceramic platter piled with slices of creamy feta cheese and fat kalamata olives glistening with herbs and oil. There are baskets heaped with sesame-crusted flatbreads, pita triangles, and the Bread and Cie baguettes I managed to salvage from the biker's paws. There's a platter of perfect crudité, in shades of green and white: blanched asparagus, tiny French green beans, sugar snap peas, cucumber, and jicama, all bundled in stacks and surrounding a spicy tzatziki dip I've scooped into a hollowed-out Savoy cabbage. The hummus and the baba ghanoush have been appropriately reapportioned into large ceramic ramekins and garnished with pine nuts, smoked paprika, and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. The savory pastries are almost ready to come out of the oven, and I've got the next batch ready to go.

“You're off the hook,” I tell Megan. “Go have fun.”

“Let's not go crazy with the
f
word,” Megan says, pulling off the kitschy apron I gave her.

As she moves through the living room, at least four sets of eyes track her progress, like predators on the African veldt. For all of Megan's one-of-the-boys behavior, she still knows how to pull focus in a roomful of men. I'm not even sure she does it deliberately. It's so far from my frame of reference that she might as well be conjugating Latin verbs with her glutes.

After a few finishing touches, I elbow my way through the crowded room and clear a swath of space on Scout's warped IKEA desk, arranging the food on a tablecloth I whipped up from a sheet of brown butcher paper and lemon leaves. Yeah, sure, I'm mired in the Martha Stewart/Rachel Ashwell aesthetic from the turn of the century. Never met a Mason jar I didn't like. But the table looks magnificent, and Megan and JJ are surrounded by men, chatting amiably on the balcony, so I decide to seize the moment and smoke a cigarette. It's either that or linger by the table hoping for accolades from the Hello Kitty crowd.

In the downstairs lobby, I pass a sylph wearing a napkin of a black cotton dress and an oversize James Perse hoodie, emphasis on the hood, which is pulled over her head like she's a size-0 Unabomber. Her eyes are shrouded in oversize Chrome Hearts sunglasses and she's holding an iPhone to her ear and murmuring something in a voice so muted I can't make it out.

“After you,” I say, holding the door open with an exaggerated flourish.

She doesn't break her stride and I find myself watching her tanned thighs as she climbs up the stairs without acknowledging me.

“No, really, after
you
,” I call as she disappears on the third-floor landing.

Downstairs in the sunlight, I spot a couple homeless people circling Tyler's car, peering into the windows for anything worth committing a felony over.

“Nothing to see here, homes,” I say, injecting bravado into my voice that I don't feel.

They shuffle away and I sprawl on the fender and inhale the sharp tang of nicotine.

Much better.

“Got one to spare?” a gravelly voice asks.

I turn and there's Billy Idol, bumming a cigarette. I un-stare like a motherfucker and offer my pack, and he leans against the car and we smoke, side by side, without speaking.

Two cigarettes later, Billy wanders off in the direction of a drum circle, and I'm ready to face the party. My plan is to cut Megan and JJ loose, throw some sparklers in the hundred-dollar cake I brought from Sweet Lady Jane—which, seriously, a hundred dollars for a birthday cake?—and slip out before things get ugly. Except the energy has shifted when I get back inside. Megan is sprawled across JJ's lap on one of the gray leather couches, and the boisterous camaraderie has subsided to a more genteel level. I mean, if you can call a room full of bikers and party girls “genteel.”

Scout and the hoodie girl, no longer hooded, are standing at the food table, laughing about something that nobody else seems to understand. And I realize that's it's not gentility; it's a taut web of attention: everyone is un-staring at Hoodie Girl.

Hoodie Girl is Eva Carlton, of course. And Scout was right about one thing: Eva is inconceivably hot. I'd seen her on celebrity blogs—and TV, of course—plus Scout's got pictures of the two of them plastered all over her refrigerator like it's a shrine, so it's not like I didn't know she was gorgeous, but in person her skin looks like it's been burnished with gold dust, and I don't mean in a makeup-y way. She just glows. She can't be more than five foot two and, I don't know, a hundred pounds, but she's working her curves like a pinup model on the nose cone of a World War II bomber. She's ditched the hoodie and her tiny black dress drips off her skin like fresh paint. It's a simple tank-top thing that ends at mid-thigh, and she's wearing what at first glance look like mid-calf lace-up Doc Martens, but they've got to be Prada or better. Little differences. The whole effect is
Oh, this old thing?
Which makes it all the more stunning.

She's picking through the crudité platter, tilting her head back to drop first one green bean and then another into her mouth like a sword swallower.

It's captivating, I have to admit. And when she nibbles a plump kalamata, every man—okay, every person—in the room feels it somewhere deep in their brain stem.

Scout spots me. “I've been looking all over for you! Come meet my best friend in the whole entire world.”

Like I said, Scout gets a little hyperbolic. I'm surprised she's not calling Eva her conjoined twin. For the record, this is a room that a landlord would call “cozy,” so it takes me three shortened steps to get from the front door to Scout, but it's still like walking through crossfire. JJ watching Eva; Megan watching JJ; Scout watching Eva; me watching Megan watch JJ watch Eva. It's the Wimbledon of un-staring.

When Eva smiles at me, it feels like someone turned on a heat lamp. She raises a piece of flatbread slathered with hummus and says, “This food is ri-
dic
-ulous.”

“Thanks,” I say, with what I hope is a humble shrug, but inside I'm fist-pumping like an Olympic champion. “Only the best for our Scout.”

“I can't believe she's been hiding you from me. Why can't I get food like this every day?”

“Have you ever been to Papa Cristo in Hollywood? Their food is a thousand times better.”

She twists her perfect features into a pout. “I never get to go anywhere. I'm always working, and the food on set is so dismal I want to kill myself.”

“Wow,” I say, deadpan. “That sounds unbearable.”

She laughs, then makes a big show over the spanakopita.

Her enthusiasm is contagious. She's the Pied Piper of the food table, luring everyone in with gestures of delight, and soon the table is crowded with pixie girls and bikers, piling plates with chunks of bread and cheese, big dollops of hummus and yogurt dip and piles of thick-cut salt-and-pepper potato chips.

That's when it dawns on me that Eva's still waving around that first piece of flatbread. She takes big, showy bites of food when people are watching, but doesn't eat otherwise. It's like performance art of someone eating. And the weird thing is that no one else notices. In fact, the Hello Kitty girls are crowded around, exclaiming over the fact that Eva's such a pig.

“I don't know how you do it,” says the one with the cat-eared bob. “If I ate like that, I'd be Adele in a week.”

Eva pops a green olive into her mouth, smacking her lips as she sucks the herby oil from her manicured fingertips. “Life's too short. I never deny myself anything. And Adele is pretty hot.”

Cat Ears slides a piece of feta onto her plate and glances at Eva for her approval.

“Have you tried this eggplant thing? It's a-maz-ing,” Eva says, piling baba ghanoush onto a baguette slice and offering it to the girl like a gift. “You'll die.”

Cat Ears takes it like Eva just handed her a Cartier love bracelet. This is the point in the party where I'm starting to fade. It always happens, and usually sooner rather than later.

I start sidling toward the kitchen, but Eva touches my arm and says, “I want to crawl inside your food and live there.”

“Ha-ha, right?” I say, then cringe inside. There's nothing more telling than answering a compliment with a questioning “Right?”

“I'm going to start parking outside your house, begging for scraps,” Eva says.

“You're sweet,” I say, light-headed from her flattery—or her proximity.

“And you're the Food Whisperer,” Eva says. “We need to talk.”

Scout grabs Eva's hand. “Come outside, I want you to meet Weston's brothers,” she says, and pulls Eva toward the door.

One minute Eva's gushing about my food, and the next I'm alone at the food table while the party's moved to the balcony. Even Megan and JJ are out there.

All the air just got sucked out of the room. I'm in a celebrity vacuum. This is a Los Angeles hazard, like a sand trap on a golf course or a pileup on the freeway. If you fall into a celebrity vacuum at a party, call it a night. You're done. You'll spend the rest of the party with your nose pressed against the glass, looking for the invisible door back in.

I grab my purse and knives and slip out the front door without saying good-bye. Mostly I'm relieved. I can only take so many hey-how-are-yous and where'd-you-get-that-cute-shirt conversations and awkward pauses.

But what the fuck just happened with Scout? I feel like she just twatblocked me with Eva, which is weird, because my blind audition was her idea in the first place. It's like she set me up with her hot, platonic friend and then spent the night flirting with him or something. I don't know. Maybe I'm overreacting. Still, it doesn't feel good.

When I get outside, I shoo a couple hipsters off the bumper and slide behind the wheel. Say what you will, there's something empowering about getting into the driver's seat of a sleek, black Porsche, even if it's not yours.

I throw on my sunglasses and slick on a coat of lip gloss, just because I can.

My phone buzzes with a text and I figure it's Megan, who's just realized I've ducked out and left her at a party she wasn't invited to in the first place.

But no. There are seven texts from my mother, and my hands break into an icy sweat at the last one.

Sugar beet, we need to talk.

CALL ME. Please.

I raised you better than this, Jessilynn. Call me this instant.

I really need your advice. You're my rock.

The last two almost make me laugh. First of all, no one's called me Jessilynn but her since I was three. Gloria had my name legally changed to Jessica because she was convinced that Jessilynn would doom me to a life in a double-wide trailer. And second, the only person who Donna relies on is Donna. Fact.

Worried about you.

So she's playing both sides of the deck. I'm her rock and she's worried about me. She's shameless. I take off the sunglasses. My lips are chapped despite the gloss. I lock the doors and hunch over the phone. I compose a text and hit Send before rereading it.

I'm fine, Mom. I've been fine for the past ten years and I'm still fine. Just tell me what you need.

I wait there in the car, just staring at the glowing screen for several long minutes, but there's no reply.

W
hen I was four years old, Donna met a rocket scientist at a party. She pried me out of Gloria's house and we were on the road to Texas within weeks. Donna and the rocket scientist got married in a civil ceremony at the courthouse the day after we arrived in Houston. There was no honeymoon.

I don't remember the drive to Houston, or arriving, or much about the house where we lived, but I remember that my rocket-scientist stepfather was tall, with a sheaf of shiny black hair and a dimple.

Or maybe that was Bob Crane from
Hogan's Heroes.
I was watching a lot of Nick at Nite.

This is what I remember for sure: eating Campbell's Bean with Bacon soup, the lush, green stalks of bamboo that lined the backyard by the alley, a nameless maid coming down the back stairs with a basket of laundry, walking to Dairy Queen with one of the neighborhood children and his Mexican nanny. I remember wide walls of glass that looked out onto an expansive and empty yard, a silver martini shaker beaded with condensation on the kitchen counter, an empty, narrow glass pitcher with a long glass stirrer.

Three months after we moved to Houston, the rocket scientist burned the house to the ground by falling asleep on the sofa with a lit cigarette. Only in Houston we didn't call it the sofa, we called it the divan.

Donna ran into my room, scooped me from my bed, and fled into the street, running from door to door until she found a neighbor who was awake. I wore pajamas decorated with teapots and toasters; Donna was naked until one of the neighbors gave her a fur from her refrigerated hall closet. We stood in the street and watched the house burn to the ground.

We lost everything in the fire, including Donna's desire to be married.

“I'm not made to be married,” she said. “I'm not Mrs. Anybody, goddammit.”

On the drive back to California, I squeezed over on the bench seat so close to her that our legs touched from hip to knee.

I saw snow for the first time on that drive; my mother pulled onto the side of the highway and we stood in our T-shirts and tennis shoes, heads thrown back, tongues out to catch the tiny flakes. She was good at those kinds of things, the details that other people might pass right by.

It was the bigger stuff where we ran into trouble.

Whatever she wants from me, Donna cannot come to L.A. She can't show up and pretend everything is normal. I refuse to drink a bottle of wine with her like we're friends. I refuse to warm to the amusement in her voice and smile at her wacky fucking escapades.

Because if I do, what happens next? I'll forgive her. And nothing scares me more than that.

When I was fourteen, she got me in front of a director named Trent Whitford. He looked like an old Seth Green, all red-haired and furrow-browed. He came to Gloria's place, and when Donna opened the door, she kissed him on the cheek—once, twice, then a third time, like she was from one of those eastern European countries where there are a hundred words for pierogi.

I was sitting next to Gloria on the couch and I could feel the distrust radiating off her in waves, but she just sipped her cold coffee and erased a string of letters from her crossword, blowing the wormy eraser bits onto the carpet like she was making a wish on a dandelion.

“Jess,” my mother said with an arm-waving flourish, “I'm thrilled to introduce our generation's own Orson Welles, the amazing Trent Whitford.”

Trent barely looked at me when we shook hands. Probably because I was wearing a stupid red-and-white-striped Marimekko minidress that my mother had bought at Theodore the previous weekend, instead of the slinky black dresses I tried on that skimmed over my body. She'd said the shapeless clown suit made me look approachable. I didn't know what she was talking about, but I felt like a little kid dressed up for a birthday party where there's going to be a magic show.

I'd insisted on wearing my fave white T-shirt over it, and she'd finally said that was okay because it looked like I wasn't trying too hard. Yeah, as
if.

Trent wanted to shoot pictures of me on the beach while the sun was setting.

“I promise, I'll have her home early,” he said, and his teeth were tiny and white like Freshmint Tic Tacs.

As we walked to his car, a low-slung, silver Aston Martin that looked like it could fly over water, I started getting excited. I mean, sure, Trent's hand lingered as he guided me into the passenger seat, but there was a pile of cameras and lights in the backseat, and I saw the twisted end of a joint poking out from the pack of Benson & Hedges cigarettes sitting on the wood-grained console between us. Maybe my mother wasn't completely full of shit. Maybe this was my big break after all. We drove down Wilshire Boulevard and the late-afternoon sun was hot and bright in my eyes.

Trent glanced at me, his eyes hidden behind a pair of black Ray-Bans. “Don't you have sunglasses?”

I shrugged and sat up taller, trying to shield myself behind the sliver of a sun visor.

“Here,” he said, and offered me his.

“I'm okay.”

“Take them,” he said. “The last thing you need is to ruin that perfect forehead.”

“Okay, Grandma,” I said, and he scowled without looking at me, then laughed.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Fifteen.”

His gaze skimmed my bare legs, then crossed the folds of my circus-striped dress. “Really?”

There was something in his voice that sounded like an accusation, like my mom showed him a Photoshopped version of me and it turned out I wasn't picture-worthy after all.

“Well, my birthday is next month,” I said.

The purr of the car engine vibrated through the floorboards and I crossed my legs, first one way, then the other, trying to find a position that didn't make me look like a dork. We rode up the Pacific Coast Highway without speaking, the hum of the car and the ambient ocean noises our only soundtrack as we zoomed past Chautauqua, then Temescal Canyon, then out beyond Sunset and Topanga.

I started to wonder where we were going, but I was too intimidated to ask. If I blew this, my mother would be so pissed that her head would explode.

Finally, we pulled into the parking lot of a state beach I didn't recognize. It was off-season, and there were only a couple cars in the lot. Trent slid the car to the edge of the bluff and killed the engine. We sat there for a minute, watching the sun shimmering on the water and the breaking waves on the crescent of sand and rocks fifty feet below us. A handful of surfers floated in the water by the rocky point, and a crumpled yellow beach towel and a Styrofoam cooler lay on the damp sand at the foot of the unpaved trail that led down from the parking lot. Other than that, the beach was deserted.

Trent climbed out of the car, exposing a sliver of skin between his jeans and his black cashmere sweater. “Come on, the light is going to be perfect in about fifteen minutes.”

He shouldered his camera bags and I grabbed my extra clothes and makeup as he headed toward the trail. When we got to the beach, he unfolded a tan Pratesi woven blanket and unpacked lenses and celluloid filters and a pile of film, even though he ended up choosing a normal Canon that didn't use analog film.

“Is this dress okay?” I asked.

“You look like a clown.”

But he wasn't interested in the other outfits I brought along, the jeans and T-shirts I packed in the bottom of my tote bag so my mother wouldn't see.

“Should I put some makeup on?” I asked, sheepish that I was bringing it up when he seemed so uninterested in my appearance.

He eyed me for a moment, but didn't answer. Clearly I was an afterthought, and he only came to capture the rugged beauty of this secluded little beach for a segment for
National Geographic
.

“Get over on those rocks.” Trent gestured to a steep formation of rocks above the high-water mark, where swarms of gnats and sea flies clouded the air. “We're losing the light.”

“Like this?” I asked a minute later, trying to position myself gracefully on the jagged, bird-shit-encrusted rocks.

“You look like a mannequin.”

There was a flat set to his mouth, and his eyes told me I was already failing. This was just another exercise in futility, another of my mother's setups that would end in humiliation.

He started clicking away, but he was frowning and gesturing for me to—what?—do something different? Be someone different? An offshore breeze ruffled my hair in what I hoped was a flattering way.
Chin up, butt under, tits out.
Whatever he wanted, I was doing it wrong. The hot, crayon-colored sunset melted into the Pacific horizon and I was sweating on a pile of slimy rocks.

Eventually the sun slipped away and the light faded into a gray dusk. I was cold and hungry, and already picturing the way that my mom's face fractured into two pieces when she got really mad, as though the lower part of her jaw wanted to get as far away from the rest of her angry head as possible.

Trent started packing his camera body and lenses into black leather bags. I clambered off the rocks and looked down the beach. A family was walking toward the trail: a dad in sunglasses and a young-looking mom with a good boob job. They were swinging a blond boy between them, playing like they were going to throw him into the surf.

I could tell he wasn't afraid they'd really do it.

Back in the parking lot, Trent threw his camera stuff into the backseat of the Aston and slid into the driver's seat and shut his door before he leaned over to unlock my side. He pulled a joint from his cigarette pack and lit it with the glowing coil of the cigarette lighter. He raised an eyebrow and extended the joint in my direction. I hesitated before shaking my head no. I didn't want to disappoint him any more than I already had, but weed just made me worry that everyone was staring at me. Even more than I normally did.

Trent inhaled, exhaled. “You party, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, willing my voice to stay in its normal octave. “Of course.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

He stared at me.

“What?” I said. “Do I have something on my face?” My mom always said that when she caught me looking at her. It sounded better when she said it.

Trent smiled, and he looked kind of cute for a second. “I have a friend with a killer beach pad right up the street.”

“Oh. Is it far?”

“Up past the pier.” He started the car. “We can drink a little champagne, get some better pictures.”

I took a cigarette from his pack and pushed the lighter in. Trent shot me an amused look, like I was a kitten tangled in a ball of yarn, but when the lighter popped up he pulled it out and held it to my dangling cigarette.

I steadied his hand with mine and looked at him through my mascara-fringed lashes. My eyes were nothing special, but when I threw a couple coats of Maybelline Blackest Black on my lashes, I felt like something out of a
Cosmopolitan
article on how to get your man.

Sure enough, Trent left his hand there, hanging in the air, as I took another drag off my cigarette. Then he lowered his hand into my lap. I exhaled and didn't know what to do. He was watching the road like he didn't even know I was there. His hand was hot on my thighs through my clown dress, and I felt prickles of self-conscious shame.

He pulled from the lot and headed north on PCH. I stared out the window. I noticed my hand trembling a little when I took another drag.

“I just remembered,” I said, in someone else's voice. “I told my grandmother I'd come straight home. After the beach.”

Three miles farther on, he edged the Aston into a turnoff and turned southward, heading for home. He didn't say anything, so I told him how much fun I had.