The A-List (4 page)

“Upstairs. Last one on the right. Mina put your stuff away.” She pointed up the circular staircase at the end of the hall and then turned away.

“Thank her for me. Look, do you happen to know if my father—”

Inga returned to whatever she was doing, and Anna found herself talking to Inga’s disappearing backside. She checked the entire ground floor for her dad but only encountered a cook and yet another housekeeper in the kitchen, smoking cigarettes and watching a Spanish
telenovella
. Neither paid her any attention, so she went upstairs and checked all seven bedrooms. Nothing. Great. Just great.

Anna wandered back to her own room. A handmade silk quilt in shades of pink lay across the oak canopy bed. The hardwood floor gleamed beneath tapestry rugs with hand-knotted edges. Anna found her clothes unpacked in an antique armoire scented with a lavender sachet, her sweaters and underwear folded in the dresser drawers. Each drawer had been scattered with rose petals. There were fresh flowers in a crystal vase on a small table by the picture window and an antique chaise longue. It was really everything a girl could want. That is, if what a girl really wanted was anything other than her father.

Just as Anna was about to kick off her shoes and curl up for a quick nap, there was a perfunctory knock on the door, which opened immediately. Inga stuck her head into Anna’s room.

“Try the gazebo.” Then the door slammed shut.

The gazebo. Her grandparents’ house had been built on something that was a rarity in Beverly Hills: a sizable plot of land. There were two acres of landscaped grounds, with a guest house, an artificial stream and small foot-bridge, a swimming pool, and a lighted paddle-tennis court. In the middle of these grounds, directly under a huge eucalyptus tree, was a New England-style gazebo large enough to seat twenty people.

Anna trudged out the back door and followed the flagstone path that led to the gazebo. The first thing she saw, standing proudly on the floor, was a five-foot-high sculpture of Cupid. His quiver was full, and he held an arrow drawn back, ready to be shot.

The second thing she saw was her father, sprawled on the wooden slats at Cupid’s feet. She gasped, afraid for an instant that he was dead. Or, at the least, very sick.

Then she heard him snore. Loudly. Was he
drunk?
To the best of her knowledge, Susan was the only one in the family with an alcohol problem. There was a strange odor she couldn’t place. No, wait—it was kind of sweet and skunky, and it made her feel a little light-headed—of course she could place it. Marijuana. Now she noticed the partially smoked joint inches from his outstretched right hand. Judging from how little had been consumed, it would appear her father had gained access to what Rick Resnick, that loser from the plane, would certainly term “primo shit.” Not that Anna actually knew what “primo shit” was. Other than alcohol, she’d never ingested a mood-altering substance in her life.

For several long moments Anna just stood there. Her father was a man who had his suits custom-made in London, and she knew he had a taste for Armagnac, but only as a drink to nurse after dinner. If someone had told her that she’d find her father passed out on the floor with a blunt, she’d have laughed.

Yet there it was. There
he
was. He was in his early forties, tall and lean. Though his eyes were closed at the moment, Anna knew them to be a startling blue against his perpetually tanned face. He had a new, spiky haircut and a day’s worth of stubble on his cheeks. Even in his disheveled state, he looked easily ten years younger than he was. Anna shook her father’s shoulder hard. “Dad. Dad!”

He snorted awake and sat bolt upright, blinking until he could focus on his daughter. “Anna?”

“Right on the first guess.”

“Hey …” He leaned against Cupid, rubbing his face. “What time is it?”

Unbelievable. Anna glared at him. “Past the time you said you’d meet my plane. And past the time you said you’d meet me for lunch.”

“Oh, man.” He ran a hand over his face. “I messed up. I’m so sorry, honey.” He stood up and hugged her. She barely hugged him back.

“Uh-oh. You’re mad. Cut me some slack, okay? I’ve been getting these bitchin’ headaches and the only thing that helps is weed. I guess it knocked me out.”

Anna’s anger instantly morphed into concern. “Have you seen a doctor?”

“Doctors.” He made a dismissive gesture with his hand and sat on the filigreed iron bench, patting the space next to him so that Anna would sit, too. “I’ve got a killer herbalist in Topanga Canyon. So, how are you?”

“Fine.” It was the automatic answer she always gave him.

“You look great. How’s your sister?”

“She’s back in rehab. I told you on the phone,” she reminded him. Fear clutched Anna’s stomach. He was acting so bizarrely. She knew her father to be an organized, PalmPilot man whose idea of casual was a three-ply cashmere sweater. But here he was, in jeans and a grungy T-shirt, using profanity. What if he really was sick? What if he had a brain tumor or some kind of weird, early-onset Alzheimer’s?

“If you’re getting bad headaches, you really should see a doctor, Dad.”

“Hey, don’t you think it’s about time you started calling me Jonathan?”

“Why?” Anna asked, trying to mask how totally freaked she was by her father’s transformation.

“You’re all grown up, that’s why. I always wanted to call my parents by their first names, but it wigged ’em out. Hey, that really sucks about Susan.”

“
That really sucks about Susan?” Don’t get too worked up over it, Dad
—
it was only a
near
overdose
—
not like she
died
or anything
.

“Fine. Jonathan,” Anna snapped.

Her father stood and stretched. “Let’s get Teresa to rustle us up some lunch, huh?” he suggested. “She’s a monster cook.”

Anna agreed. And while part of her wanted to run away and pretend this encounter had never occurred, the other part of her still hadn’t eaten all day and was starving. And maybe everything her father had said was the truth. She’d read how marijuana helped ease the symptoms of some illnesses, so why not give her father the benefit of the doubt?

As they strolled back toward the house, her father asked all about Anna’s life: school, guys, et cetera. She gave her usual polite and obligatory answers. Then he asked about the subject that always seemed to interest him the most: his ex-wife.

“She’s how she always is,” Anna tried to remind him as they went in the back door.

“Still the Ice Maid of the Upper East Side?”

“At the moment she’s in Venice, thawing out.”

Her father’s face lit up. “No shit? She decided to come here with you?”

It took a beat for Anna to realize that her father was thinking of the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice, south of Santa Monica, by the ocean. “Venice,
Italy
,” Anna explained.

“Right. Shoulda known. Your mother wouldn’t be caught dead in Venice. Way too funky for her.” He sounded disappointed. They went into the kitchen; her father asked the older woman to fix them some food. She rose wordlessly, her eyes still glued to her soap opera.

A few moments later they were in the formal dining room, eating blue corn tortilla chips and homemade tomato-and-cilantro salsa and avocado-and-chicken-breast sandwiches. Anna told her father about that evening’s date with Ben, omitting the story of how she’d met him. Then she wiped her mouth and set the perfectly ironed linen napkin next to her plate. “That was delicious. I think I’ll take a nap before I get ready. What are you doing to ring in the New Year, Dad?”

He wagged a finger at her. “
Jonathan
. I’m low-keying it this year. Hanging out with a friend, that’s all.”

Anna went upstairs and gazed out her window, which faced the backyard. She hadn’t been there for more than about five seconds when she saw her father head back toward the gazebo. And then she remembered: He’d left behind that fatty he’d been smoking.

Four

12:43
P.M
., PST

S
eventeen-year-old Samantha Sharpe, daughter of America’s favorite movie star, Jackson Sharpe, was having a really bad day. She was in her bedroom suite (approximately the same size as a small ranch house in, say, Van Nuys), on the second floor of her father’s palatial Bel Air estate (a mile, several thousand square feet, and a couple of zeros north of Jonathan Percy’s mansion). She wore a silk robe over a black strapless bra and boy-cut lace panties. At the moment, most of the suite’s twelve hundred square feet were covered in cocktail dress couture.

In exactly six hours and twenty-seven minutes, her father would be marrying a pregnant ingénue bimbo named Poppy Sinclair. Everyone who was anyone would be there. Photos of the nuptial extravaganza would run in every media market around the world. And Sam Sharpe still didn’t have a thing to wear.

To the reception, that is.

For the ceremony she’d be poured into a hideous gold silk charmeuse bridesmaid’s gown designed by Donatella as a “personal favor” to Poppy and Jackson. As soon as the ceremony was over, Sam planned to change into something stunning. And, hopefully,
flattering
.

She’d chosen her après-ceremony dress weeks ago—a wicked Stella McCartney number in powder-blue velvet. But when she’d tried it on last night, she’d realized that it made her look like a fat pig. Why hadn’t any of the so-called friends who’d shopped with her said anything? She’d end up a laughingstock in
People
, for chrissake. No, worse—she’d be the “What Was She Thinking?” fashion victim of the week in
Star
.

Well, that was
not
going to happen. Even though the photos would undoubtedly last longer than the actual marriage. She was not going to be caught for posterity looking like Kelly Osbourne in one of those god-awful velvet paintings they sold on the beach. What good were money and power if you didn’t put them to good use?

So, the evening before, she’d called Fleur Abra, the wedding planner, and asked if she would be so kind as to call the design houses and have them send over some alternative dresses for the wedding reception. And presto—just like that—Sam’s bedroom had been transformed into a multidesigner trunk show. Size eight, she told Fleur. Nothing conservative, and nothing in the earth colors that made her brown hair/brown eyes/yellow-undertone skin look jaundiced.

On a rolling costume rack in the middle of Sam’s airplane hangar-size closet hung the dresses Sam had eliminated: a black Chanel that made her look like she was going to a funeral, a Tom Ford in oyster pink with flounces on the hips. The
hips
. It added ten pounds. The man had to be a misogynist to design something like that. Then there was the Badgley Mischka aubergine concoction that made her look like an unpicked garden vegetable and two monstrosities by Versace that were … well, too Versace.

She held up a deconstructed pinstripe mess from Anne Valérie Hash to the mirror and checked out the reflection. It looked like it should be titled “When Business Suits Go Bad.” Who had decided Anne Valérie was the new
It
designer, anyway?

Those were just the dresses that fit. In the couldn’t-zip-it-up-if-her-life-depended-on-it pile were two Marc Jacobses, a Galliano, an Oscar de la Renta, a red Alexander McQueen, a lace Dior, and a drop-waisted Prada.

Behind her, atop her bed, were the potential accessories for the evening: a dozen assorted purses (all so tiny that she couldn’t fit inside more than a lip gloss, her Valium prescription, and a condom; fortunately, that was all she ever needed to carry in an evening purse). There was also an array of jewelry from Harry Winston. The jewelry was hers; her father took her there to shop twice a year, on her birthday and Christmas. (Actually, his assistant took her.) And at the foot of the bed were towering heels by Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, and Pierre Hardy, lined up like gay soldiers on parade.

Since the items had come from several stores, each had sent a designer’s assistant to help Sam with the selection process. At the moment these assistants were hovering around Sam like feeding hummingbirds, hoping that one of the girl’s pudgy fingers would extend toward their dress, shoes, and/or bag, followed by the magic words “That one is perfect.”

And why not? One photo in a major magazine of Sam Sharpe wearing their fashion could translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales.

Sam scanned the dresses, the purses, and the shoes. The hummingbirds froze, holding their collective birdy breath.

“Thanks for the effort,” Sam said. “But none of this works.”

The hummingbirds exhaled their disappointment. Veronique, the Parisian assistant from Chanel, was the first to speak up. “I sink zere are sum very lovely sings.”

“Zere are,” Sam agreed. She padded over to the costume rack and lifted the gossamer Galliano. “However, only an anorexic could fit her thighs into this.”

“Perhaps eef we try a largeer size—”

“Please, please, just take it all away.” Sam plopped down on her bed, carelessly wrinkling a pale blue silk Imitation of Christ under her left thigh. Sam simply refused to wear a larger size. Approaching double digits in a dress size was worse than chronic halitosis. God, these assistants were just so passive-aggressive!

“Excuse me,” the Imitation of Christ aide said, gently edging the silk dress from beneath Sam’s behind. “I can return to the store and bring over three or four more, if you’d like.”

“No, but thanks anyway.” Sam closed her eyes. No one knew. No one understood. They thought it was all about her father’s wedding to that twit, but it was more than that. Today was the most important day of Sam’s seventeen years on the planet. Ben Birnbaum, the unrequited love of her life, was coming home from Princeton. He was coming to the wedding. And he was coming without a date.

She’d demanded that Fleur Abra call her the moment Ben’s RSVP card arrived to be certain that he’d checked off “party of one.” The call had come three weeks ago. Ben was indeed flying solo. In other words, today was her best—and possibly last—chance to bag him.

Sam had been crushing on Ben ever since that fateful day five and a half years ago when he’d French-kissed her at his family’s annual Fourth of July barbecue. Maybe he’d done it because it had turned out that they were both reading—and hating—
Atlas Shrugged
. Maybe he’d done it just because he could see the sun, the moon, and the stars of his own reflection in her love-besotted eyes. Whatever the reason, it had been a defining moment in Sam’s life.