The A-List (16 page)

Anna drew in a quick breath when she recognized the conductor, one of the most famous conductors and composers of the late twentieth century. He was beaming at the boy, who was obviously being wildly applauded by both audience and orchestra.

Anna looked from the photograph to Django, who was still retrieving things from the floor. There was no doubt: Anna could see the boy in the man. It was Django. But when she wordlessly handed him the photo, her eyes betrayed nothing.

Everyone has secrets, she thought. No one ever really knows anyone.

Django stuffed his papers back in the glove compartment and slammed it shut. “Got everything now?”

“Yes. Thank you, Django. More than you know. I had the ultimate squished-bug kind of night.”

Django scratched his stubbly chin. “Would you buy it if I told you that it’s always darkest before the dawn? Or that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel? Course there’s always a possibility that it’s an oncoming train. But still.”

She mustered a smile. “Thank you for trying to cheer me up. Thank you for everything. Really. You’re a gentleman and a scholar.”

He nodded, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and headed for the guest house. Then spun back to her. “Spain. Chick Corea.”

“Pardon?”

“When I feel like I’m peelin’ myself off the windshield, that’s what I listen to. If you want to borrow the CD, drop by. Anytime. ’Night.” Django doffed his imaginary hat and strode off.

Anna watched him depart, then went to the front door and opened it, thinking how good it would be to get horizontal … alone. And to shower. A really, really hot shower to wash away any memory of Ben Birnbaum.

She stepped into the pitch-black foyer.

A woman screamed.

Anna jumped back instinctively, her arm sweeping against the Ming vase on the small armoire near the door. It crashed to the marble-tiled floor.

The foyer light snapped on. A barefoot blonde in a blue silk robe was carrying a plate of crème brûlée cookies from Spago—Anna knew what they were because her dad sent her a pound of them every year on her birthday—they were his favorite dessert in the world. That Anna found them too rich seemed to be completely lost on him.

“What the hell was that?” Anna’s father came out of his bedroom, shirtless and in pajama bottoms. He made it halfway down the stairs before he took in the tableau in the hallway. “Well. That’s not exactly the way I’d planned to have you two meet.”

“I’m sorry,” the blonde told Anna. “You startled me.”

Anna was more than startled. Not so much that this woman was obviously her father’s significant other (at least for the evening), but rather because instead of what Anna might have expected—some early-twenties, over-the-top
Maxim
babe with pneumatic body parts that could double as flotation devices—this woman was tall, angular, and very thin. With the same understated blond beauty and patrician features as Anna’s mother.

“It’s okay, Margaret, it’s my daughter,” Jonathan Percy called out as he came the rest of the way downstairs.

“Yes, I gathered that,” the woman said. She put the plate of cookies on the armoire. “Hello. I’m Margaret Cunningham. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Your father has told me so much about you.”

Okay, this was deeply bizarre. The closer Anna got, the more this woman looked like Jane Percy’s doppelganger. But Anna’s good manners automatically kicked in, and she took the woman’s hand. “Happy New Year, Margaret.”

“So, you two.” Her father’s voice was hearty. “Now that we’re all together and no one is going to get robbed, why don’t we take that dessert and all go eat it in the kitchen? I’ll make us some tea.”

Tea?
Anna couldn’t believe her father was even making the suggestion. She glanced at Margaret, whose incredulous expression was equally reminiscent of how her mother would react.

“I’m not sure that’s the best of notions right now, Jonathan,” Margaret said.

“I agree.” Anna hurried back up the stairs. “I’m sorry about the vase, Dad, and about the interruption. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Anna, wait.”

“Tomorrow,” Anna called back over her shoulder. “Good night.” “But Anna—”

“Good
night
.”

Anna made the shower as steamy as she could stand it and scrubbed herself with a loofah. Washed her hair twice. Then soaped herself again. But even with her skin red and raw, she still felt him, still tasted him. Damn Ben. Damn him to hell.

By the time she emerged from the shower, Anna felt woozy. She dried off, donned her favorite Ralph Lauren silk pajamas, and padded back to her room, more than ready to bring this insane day to a close.

It was not to be. She had a visitor: her father, now clad in jeans and a T-shirt. He was waiting for her on the antique chaise longue by the picture window.

“Anna, we have to talk.”

Anna nearly groaned. “Dad—”

“Jonathan,” he corrected.

“
Whatever
. It’s almost five o’clock in the morning.”

“We need to hash this out.”

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow—later today—please?”

“I don’t think it can.”

Anna tried to keep her voice from wavering. “I’m just not up for a talk right now. I’ve had a really long day. And a really awful night.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Me too. Which is why all I want to do is—”

“I won’t be able to sleep with all this tension between us. There are things that need to be said.”

Oh, poor baby. He wouldn’t be able to sleep. Suddenly Anna couldn’t take it anymore. Every awful moment of the past twenty-four hours came bubbling up in her like some kind of bilious sulfur spring.

“Maybe there are things that need to be said, Dad. But you could have said them when you picked me up at the airport. Oh, wait, you didn’t show up for that. Well, when you met me for lunch, then. Oops. Didn’t show up for that one, either. Or when I came home this afternoon and found you passed out in the gazebo—”

“I understand that you’re angry.”

“I’m also exhausted. I don’t think either condition is conducive to a father-daughter bonding moment.”

“It’s awfully harsh of you to judge before you know the facts.”

“What I just said
are
the facts. You stood me up, Dad.”

As she pulled down the silk comforter on her bed, she mentally added: Oh, by the way, Dad—I got dumped tonight by a boy who pretended that he thought I was a precious diamond and then threw me away like so much cubic zirconia when I wouldn’t put out. And it hurts. It really hurts.

Not that she’d
ever
tell him that part. But what would it be like to have a father who cared enough to ask her what had made the night so horrible? Or to feel close enough to him to want to tell him? Was it really too much to ask for?

“From your point of view, I stood you up,” her father agreed. “But you never bothered to ask me what happened or why—”

“You’re supposed to be the father here.” She got into bed.

“Have you thought at all about what it’s like for me to suddenly have you back in my life?”

Anna felt as if she’d been punched in the gut. “I thought you invited me. I’ll go back to New York in the morning, if that’s what you want.”

“No, that’s not what I want. Why are you making this so difficult?”

Anna pressed her lips together in a thin line. “Just forget it.”

“No. Jeez, you’re just as touchy as your mother. What I’m trying to say—if you could manage to remove that chip from your shoulder for just a second—is that I’m glad you came.”

Meaningless. His words were just so empty and meaningless. Anna folded her arms and dead-eyed him. For a long moment neither spoke.

Finally her father spread his hands. “Anna, did you expect me to morph into Superdad overnight?”

Anna jutted her chin upward. “No. I don’t expect anything from you at all.”

“There’s that attitude again. Just like your mother.”

“Well, evidently you like her enough to pick her double as your playmate!” Anna exploded.

Jonathan furrowed his eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m sure the fact that Margaret looks just like Mom isn’t lost on you.”

He looked shocked. “Anna, she doesn’t look anything like your mother.”

“You’re joking. Of course she does.”

Her father shook his head. “Honestly, Anna, you’re so exhausted that either you’re hallucinating or delusional.”

“Fine. I’m wrong. You’re right. She looks like a hobbit. She looks like the Velveteen Rabbit. She looks like J. Alfred Prufrock—take your pick. Glad that’s settled. And now I am going to sleep.” She pulled the covers up to her chin, desperate for this day to finally—
finally!
—come to an end.

Her father regarded her for a moment. His eyes went hazy. “I didn’t want it to be like this. This isn’t how I …”

He sighed. Then he came over to the bed and gently tucked the comforter around her. It took Anna back to a time long ago, when her parents were still married to each other. On the rare night that her father came home while she was still awake, he’d come to her room to make sure she was tucked in and her reading lamp was out. He’d kiss her forehead and then go check on Susan. Anna recalled how cherished she’d felt, how loved. And for that moment all was right with the world.

The long-forgotten memory made a place behind Anna’s eyes ache. With that ache came the title of a Robert Frost poem, the first she’d ever memorized: “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Twenty-one

11:26
A.M
., PST

T
he young man stood by the front door of the house off North Foothill Drive, talking into his cell phone. “Yeah, I knocked, but no one answered.”

“Did you ring the bell?”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s broken.”

“Did you consider knocking
loudly?
” Sam asked him.

“If I knock any louder, I’ll, like, wake people up.”

“That’s the whole point, Monty,” she said with exaggerated patience. “If you don’t wake her up, she won’t know you’re there. Which means that you’re like a tree falling in the forest with no one to notice that you’ve fallen. Which means that you don’t actually exist. Which leads directly to an existential black hole. And we don’t want to go there when the New Year is only eleven hours old, do we?”

“Sure don’t,” Monty agreed.

“Great. So knock hard and call me back.”

“Gotcha.” Monty Pinelli put away his cell, pounded hard on the front door, kicked it a few times, and then pounded it again for good measure. Whatever Sam Sharpe told him to do, he’d do, because Sam Sharpe was his ticket.

The fact that Monty and his older brother, Parker, even knew Sam Sharpe was due to their mother, Patti Pinelli, who made sure that whatever piece of shit apartment they were living in hung on to the tattered fringes of the Beverly Hills 90210 zip code. “No one has to know exactly where you live,” she always said. “Let them think you’re one of them and make the contacts you need. That’s how I did it.”

Contacts were how Monty and Parker’s mom had gotten her first—and only—film role, in an R-rated piece of crap called
Posers
, about two young models and what they did for love. The other actress had gone on to fame, fortune, and the Hollywood A-list. Patti had never gotten within flirting distance of it. She had, however, flirted heavily with Bruno Pinelli, who owned the club where she’d worked as an exotic dancer. Bruno had promised he’d use his “Hollywood connections” to help further her career. Four years and two kids later she divorced his ass, which was why Monty only knew his father by legend as “that sonofabitch.”

It was right around that time, Monty was pretty sure, when his mom had first been diagnosed with clinical manic depression, a diagnosis she considered to be utter crap. The way she looked at it—she was poor, broke, had two kids, and her looks were going—there would be something wrong with her if she
wasn’t
depressed.

Monty knew that he and Parker had something their mother lacked: game. Whereas she reeked of working class, desperation, and sales at JC Penney, Monty and Parker had perfected the art of the blend. They were chameleons who could change their striations to match their background. Yep, the Pinelli boys could hang with, even thrive amongst, the rich and the famous.

This was key because Monty’s mom never kept them in one place for very long. Every so often his mom would stop taking her meds. Then she’d get a sudden insight: The neighbors and/or her former
Posers
costar had hired a hit man to kill her; life was a dark hole and they’d all be better off dead. That would lead her to conclude that the only way to bring herself out of this funk would be to go on an immediate shopping spree, preferably at Neiman Marcus.

She’d head for the nearest upscale mall, where she’d lift some rich bitch’s wallet and use the credit cards to buy anything her heart desired. Accomplished grifter that she was, Monty’s mom would then move her kids to a new place with a good school system, always one step ahead of the law.

But now Patti had told her sons that she was determined her boys would stay in Beverly Hills, no matter what it took. Parker believed her. Monty didn’t. But then, Monty hardly ever agreed with his brother about anything.

Parker, who had been so named because he’d been conceived atop a Monopoly board, was a high school senior. He’d been such a cute baby that people would stop to try and lift him from his stroller in order to get a closer look. At age almost eighteen, he bore a striking resemblance to James Dean, except he was nearly six feet tall. He cultivated this resemblance to the max. Like Dean, he planned to become a movie star at a very young age. Unlike Dean, he planned to live long enough to enjoy it.

Parker had already acquired an agent, albeit one in the San Fernando Valley. While Parker had James Dean’s looks, Monty knew the truth: His big bro had zero talent. His acting deeply sucked. But he had so much personal charisma that people (read: women and gay men and the dried-up prune who taught drama at Beverly Hills High, who kept casting Parker in the leads of the school plays) often overlooked that fact.

Parker’s “agent” was a lascivious older gentleman who liked Parker to do odd jobs around his ranch in Santa Barbara. The old geezer never touched Parker. But just the way he looked at Parker—it was enough to make Monty sick. So he’d never gone again.