Younger (4 page)

“For you? Of course not.” He had the good grace to blush. “You’re a thoroughbred, Anna. You want clients, you’ll get clients.”

“Anyone in mind?” she asked, knowing there wouldn’t be.

Gregg motioned for the check, avoiding her gaze. When he turned back, his eyes were flat, the shutters drawn. “I’ll let you know if I hear of anything.” His smile reasserted itself, sincere as a time-share salesman’s. “You can count on me.”

Was she getting paranoid? Her assistant handed her only three messages on her return from lunch. Had everyone she knew suddenly decided she was over the hill?
Christ!

Just three messages, and two were from ad salesmen. “Just blow them off, Kelly,” she said. “Then memo Richard asking to whom we should be referring ad reps from now on.” The third message was from Jan, inviting her to a barbecue the following Sunday.

“A barbecue? Are you going all Topanga rustic on us now?” she teased when Jan answered the phone. The Bergers had bought a big house in the canyon two years before, in keeping with the piles of money George was making.

“We never had a proper housewarming, and with George’s movie opening soon, we thought we’d inaugurate the new screening room, as well.”

“Spareribs and bloodsucking nightwalkers? You won’t find me passing that up.”

Jan didn’t sound like a woman worried that her husband had a roving eye, Anna thought as she put down the receiver. Still, even considering how long they’d been friends, Anna doubted she’d be the one on the receiving end of confidences. She and Jan just weren’t that close.

Anyhow, she had enough worries of her own. She reached for her Rolodex. There were plenty of people besides that deadbeat Gregg Hatch to remind of her continued existence.

A barbecue that included a screening meant industry big shots and celeb casual dress. Anna wore superstretchy designer jeans, with a fitted white ruffled shirt that had set her back almost $500 at Barney’s even on sale, and a pair of black Prada flats.
Over a thousand smackeroos’ worth of casual,
she thought as she grabbed a gray pashmina from the coat rack by the door to the garage.

More and more, she saw Jan only at the “girly dinners” with Allie, so she’d been to the Bergers’ massive spread only twice. The backyard was walled off, but tonight the double security gate stood open.

Anna made her way toward the sound of voices and muted music beyond. She vaguely recognized a few of Jan’s “mom” friends and spotted Allie’s boss, a portly, saturnine über-agent almost as well-known as his clients.

Then she spied her hostess perched on a chaise lounge by the pool, chatting with Allie and her girlfriend, Shawna. “Sorry. I guess fashionably late went out of style while I was still doing my makeup,” she said as she joined them. “Hey, Shawna.”

Shawna smiled warmly, giving her long, curly hair a shake.

“Some barbecue, Jannie.” Anna turned and looked at the eight-topper round teak tables sitting under a marquee awning close to the house, next to which a catering team in white jackets and chefs’ toques presided over a row of gas grills.

“You think the tables are okay without cloths? George told me that’d make it look too much like a wedding.”

“Well, if it isn’t the elegant Anna!” She turned to see George bearing down on her. The formerly scruffy, bearded hippie philosophy instructor was now a clean-shaven, balding country squire. All that was missing was the ascot.

Fame had settled on George Berger’s spindly shoulders with a vengeance. He’d become embarrassingly pompous, considering that his success sprang from highbrow folderol about vampires that was, nonetheless, utter trash. The new George had handily forgotten the old George’s failure to get tenure at a series of Midwestern universities. While the new Jan had retained her down-home style, George had tried remaking himself as a bon vivant, an experiment as fruitless as his tenure attempts.

“Swell party,” she murmured, air-kissing a cloud of aftershave.

He gestured expansively. “I think you’ll enjoy the food,” he promised, his tone insinuating that others rarely got to dine as sumptuously as did the Bergers. To his wife, he said, “Now can you see how gauche white tablecloths would have looked, sweetheart?”

Jan flushed at George’s dry chuckle, while Anna mentally cringed as he grasped his spouse’s elbow and pulled her to her feet, his smile patronizing. “And now I need to take my lady wife away to greet some of our other guests.” Jan followed like a chastened child.

“Whoa! What was that ‘lady wife’ stuff? And treating Jan like she’s twelve?”

Allie shook her head. “I shouldn’t say it, especially now that George is my client, but he’s become unbearable. You don’t see them often, or you wouldn’t have been surprised that Jan worries he’ll get tired of her. He treats her like the hired help.”

“And she just takes it?”

Allie shrugged. “When they’re alone, who knows? She’d never cross him in public. And even if she fears being suddenly the
fired
help, she’s still in awe of him. Of course, poor Jan’s in awe of almost everyone. Don’t let her fool you, either. She—Oh, hell, here comes Nadine Metzger.” Her voice dropped. “Simply the most boring producer in—Hey, Nadine, how’s life? Do you know my friend Anna?”

After the most elaborate barbecue Anna had ever been served, everyone filed dutifully into the screening room. In a world where even lowly assistants had monster flat-screen TVs on their walls, the Bergers’ setup raised the bar for aspirants. As the guests entered, the back wall slid open to reveal a screen of multiplex proportions; the rest of the room was given over to overstuffed armchairs set in pairs next to small tables. A built-in bar was staffed by a man as handsome as Tapp Blaine, the film’s young star, who had suddenly materialized to soak up his share of attention, giving George a brisk man-hug before turning to greet those more pivotal to his career.

To Anna’s surprise, the hostess plopped herself down on the chair beside hers. “Aren’t you going to sit with George, Jan?”

“Nah.” She shrugged. “Hey, lemme get us some wine before he starts yakking. He’ll kill me if I interfere with his moment!” Before Anna could say she didn’t want more to drink, Jan was on her feet, bumping into a few tables on the way to the bar, having clearly imbibed plenty already.

She came back followed by the bartender, who carried a bottle of white wine in a chiller and two glasses.

“Ah, here goes,” Jan murmured as those in front took their seats and the lights faded.

“Have you seen it before?”

“Not seeing it would be grounds for divorce.” Jan snorted. “It isn’t bad, though.”

Anna supposed that, as far as contemporary vampire films went, it would be bearable. George wasn’t completely devoid of talent, though Anna had found his last movie more irritating than frightening.

A short way into the night’s offering, it, too, irritated. The shallow, gorgeous twenty-five-year-olds pretending they’d lived for two hundred years not only looked adolescent, they behaved like teenagers, too, as though the need for fresh blood came second to tracking trends and getting laid. Then someone on-screen said, “What more could anyone want than to stay young forever?” and she felt the character could have been summing up her own dilemma.

That’s what it was all about, and not just in the movie industry.
Especially,
she thought ominously,
when you’re fifty-seven and faced with a total lack of income until Social Security kicks in
. She forced her attention back to the screen. She couldn’t sob at George’s screening. At least not until the sad part. And with this kind of movie, she knew she could count on a sad part before it was over.

By the time the lights went up to applause mixed with whistles and hoots, Anna felt more sleepy than weepy. She turned to Jan, who was pouring herself the dregs of the wine, Anna having left her own glass almost untouched. “That was really”—she wiped the word
interesting
off her lips since everyone knew it was Hollywoodese for
lousy
—“thought-provoking.”

“It makes its point. Getting old sucks, doesn’t it?” Jan asked, so loudly a few heads turned. She lowered her voice. “I mean, look at old George up there.” She nodded toward the front, where her husband was being congratulated. “Older than me yet he’s considered in his prime, while I’m past my sell-by date, just an aging woman pampering a buncha spoiled rich brats.”

The resentment in her voice shocked Anna. “C’mon, Jan. George loves you. You like your work. You’ve got a great job, lots of friends.”

“Yeah, right.” She snorted. “Lucky me. Notice how I’m even wearing makeup? I feel like a fake but, I mean, everyone’s a fake, aren’t they?”

“Surely not all of us.”

“Look in the mirror, honey. You pretend you’re happy. But what have you got? No man, no kids, not even a dog. Just clients. And money, of course. One thing about us, huh? No matter what happens, we’re set for life. I’ll get half of George’s pile if he ever dumps me.”

Anna tried to look amused, but Jan’s remarks, in addition to being mean-spirited, had hit home. “No half of a pile for me. If I didn’t have work, I’d just be old and poor.”

“Come on. What about that money your grandmother left you? Must now be a nest egg big enough to keep you in omelettes for life. Invested for decades, right?”

“Oh,
that
. I hardly ever think about it. Anyhow, it’s not all about money, is it?”

“If I knew what it was all about, do you think I’d still be married to George, sitting in this fucking wannabe hacienda, waiting for him to ditch me?” Jan stood up. “C’mon, I gotta go say buh-bye to these freeloaders.”