Beautiful Stranger (26 page)

“Oh my gosh, what happened?” someone with a very high-pitched voice cried.

Sam turned; there were Dee and Jack, back from Hawaii. Dee threw herself into Sam’s arms. “You broke up with Eduardo? I’m so sorry! Why didn’t you tell me when I called you?”

It was all Sam could do not to cry. When Dee and Jack had headed off to Hawaii, Sam hadn’t been engaged. Then she had been. Then it had ended horribly. Dee’s genuine heartfelt sorrow made her feel even worse.

She hadn’t talked about her breakup with Eduardo with anyone but Anna since she’d come back to Los Angeles. It was as if speaking about it would make it more real than it already was. Once school started, she’d decided, and Eduardo was back in France, she would share the news. Now that she saw Dee, right there in her friend’s thin and newly tanned arms, she decided she wasn’t going to expand her circle of knowledge here and now either. What was the point? It would only make her feel worse. If there was one thing in life she didn’t want, it was pity from Dee Young.

“Just one of those things,” Sam replied breezily. She’d been around actors all her life; at this moment she was damn well going to act with the best of them. She stood taller and shook her silken almond hair—she’d had Raymond color it the day she’d come back from New York—off her face with a practiced gesture, keeping all angst out of her voice.

“Hey, it’s great to see you. Did you have fun?” she asked Dee.

“It was fantastic,” Jack responded eagerly, adding a hug of his own.

“I’ll tell you all about it later,” Dee promised, then grabbed Sam’s hand. “But seriously, what happened with Eduardo?”

At that moment, the music cranked to another level. Sam put a hand by her ear and shrugged helplessly, as if to say she couldn’t hear what Dee had asked, or that it would be too hard for her to answer. The last thing she wanted to do right now was let the floodgates open. Because she knew that once she did, she’d never get them closed again.

Sheer Showbiz Genius

“W
ell, that’s it,” Sam declared. “There’s no club in L.A. but Bye, Bye Love. You pulled it off!” She hugged Cammie hard. “I am so proud of you!”

“Glad you like it.” Cammie smiled. “’Cause you’re on the permanent guest list.”

“Me too?” Dee asked.

“Of course.” Cammie turned to Anna. They were just a few feet away from the main bar, a semicircular affair made entirely from reclaimed automobile hoods, with their hood ornaments still adorning the metal. At the moment, the crowd at the bar was three deep. “And you would be too, if you were sticking around. But you’re not. Too bad. You’ve made life more interesting. Really, you have.”

Sam doubted that, because in her experience, wherever the party was, that’s where you found Cammie. But Cammie could afford to be in a benevolent mood, since she was the center of attention tonight, and she looked even more amazing than usual in her lime green, Randolph Duke beaded mesh spaghetti-strap dress. She didn’t disguise an iota of her body; the dress was practically painted on. Sam was happy for her and jealous as hell, both at the same time. It wasn’t a new feeling—Cammie was forever showing off her perfect body.

The thought involuntarily came to Sam’s mind:
I thought I’d be here with Eduardo, showing off my perfect engagement ring
.

“Hey, beautiful.”

Sam turned, her heart beating faster. In that instant she knew she hadn’t truly given up hope, and that she would take Eduardo back in a second if he’d only come for her. But her buoyed hopes sunk immediately when she realized it was Parker standing beside her. Still, she couldn’t help but smile to see her good friend. He looked fantastic, with a new short, spiky haircut and the golden glow of a guy who had just spent two weeks on location shooting a Showtime original film down in Camp Pendleton. The gig—called
Boot
—was about a disparate collection of young men from around the country who come together for basic training as Marines. The director of
Boot
had been an assistant director on
Ben-Hur;
Parker had been hired immediately on the heels of wrapping his work on that film with Sam’s father.

She was thrilled that her friend was finally getting some work on his own. No one deserved a break more than Parker. She threw her arms around him. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

“I’ll have to go away more often, if you’re going to greet me like that,” Parker said with a pearly white grin. “Hey, I want you to meet someone.” He slipped an arm around the shapely waist of a girl who looked familiar to Sam. She had long, wavy chestnut hair, held back by a slender black ribbon, and impressive curves encased in a citrus-print baby doll—

“Citron. You’re the waitress from the Polo Lounge,” Sam filled in. She and Parker had met Citron there when she’d waited on them. Parker had been into the girl from the first moment he’d seen her; that had been clear to Sam. At the time, his preoccupation with her had been more than a little annoying, but now, seeing the grin on her friend’s face, Sam couldn’t help but be pleased.

“Citron Simms,” the girl replied, laughing. “Lord, I can’t ever remember people’s names!”

She had that sweet, Southern accent that Sam remembered. Evidently Parker had moved in on her after all.

“She’s Django’s sister,” Parker added.

Sam vaguely remembered that, too—that Citron was the younger sister of Anna’s father’s chauffeur. “So how long have you two been hanging out?” Why not rub salt in her own wounds and find out that everyone was blissfully happy and in love but her?

“Just since I got back from the shoot.” Parker gave Citron that special look that Sam had seen him give to so many girls, and it always had the same effect—they melted. Citron, however, didn’t seem to melt, but returned a similarly special look instead. Which was interesting.

Parker looked past Sam. “Where’s Eduardo?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She stopped him quickly. “How was your film?”

“I don’t want to talk about that, either,” he replied ruefully. “I’m sunburned in places I didn’t know you could sunburn. And no, it wasn’t a porno—it was rated R. But all the R seemed to be me.” Parker looked around. “It’s nuts in here, huh?”

That was an understatement. It was an hour later, and the club’s energy and excitement hadn’t diminished at all. In fact, it was right at the maximum of its capacity, and the door crew was keeping a careful count on who was coming in and out. Sam knew that the worst thing that could happen would be a visit from the fire marshals and an order to empty the place out. She’d been in situations like that before, and they were never fun. Crowds tended to get ugly when their Dionysian reveling was interrupted and they were told to disband.

She surveyed the premises. The dance floor was a paparazzi’s dream. In one corner alone, she spotted Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Mena Suvari, and Pink. One of Cammie and Ben’s really smart touches had been a so-called Cone of Silence that lowered from the ceiling to the floor. VIPs could go inside the clear Plexi-glas cone to talk without being bothered, while at the same time being admired by all the people outside the cone. Of course, there was also a more private VIP section for those moments when celebs really did not want to be gawked at. But Sam guessed that it would always be empty. Celebrities came to clubs to be seen. If they weren’t seen, they felt as if they didn’t exist. The cone was sheer showbiz genius.

They were inside the cone—it held a dozen people comfortably, as well as a stocked refrigerator and minibar—at that very moment. It was so soundproof that they could barely hear the beat of Kanye West that was driving the dancers. So soundproof, in fact, that Sam heard the beeper go off inside Cammie’s Zac Posen citrus yellow beaded clutch handbag.

Cammie opened the bag, shut off her beeper, and found the small walkie-talkie communicator that linked her to Ben.

“Are you there?”

“Copy that.” Ben’s deep, familiar voice came through loud and clear.

“You handling the music change?”

“Already on it.”

“Who’s up next?”

“Wait and see. And fuck John Carlos!” his voice chortled. Sam saw him climb down a short ladder from the overhead catwalk to the DJ area.

She noticed that Anna was watching him. For the briefest moment, Ben’s eyes met Anna’s through the Plexiglas, and then she quickly looked away. So did Ben. It was strange. Sam felt for her friend, yes. But she thought it might be a good thing that Anna and Ben were history. When they’d first met, she’d been terribly jealous—especially because she’d had a crush on Ben since middle school. But the better she got to know Anna, the more she realized that the tumult of Ben-and-Anna wasn’t good for Anna. And Anna was the person she cared about now. Especially with her going off to college, it was better that there’d been a clean break, no matter how ugly it was. At least Anna wouldn’t be blaming herself for his assholian behavior.

“Let’s listen.” Cammie flicked a switch to an internal speaker, which allowed the sounds outside to be heard inside the cone.

Ben took hold of a handheld mike. “You welcomed her, now let’s give her a big goodbye. Give it up for the last hour’s DJ, Miss Beyoncé Knowles!”

The crowd cheered and whooped, as Beyoncé—dressed in a self-designed House of Deréon off-the-shoulder black satin crepe dress—took a happy bow.

“Bye, Bye Love will have a different guest DJ spinning every hour on the hour,” Ben crowed into the microphone. “So let’s welcome to the turntables for the next hour the star of the hit TV show
Hermosa Beach,
Miss Pegasus Patton!”

The crowd whooped as Pegasus, twirling her
über
-long,
über
-blond hair, in a strapless black toile gown designed by Gisella Santa Maria, blew kisses to the audience. After sizing up the daunting array of pots, switches, knobs, and sliders in the DJ booth, pausing twice to clear her stray flaxen locks from the console, she started her first song, Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” and then leaned over the railing of the booth to pump her first at the crowd below.

“That’s my cue to dance with Ben,” Cammie exulted, then shot Anna an oh-so-innocent look—Sam could only imagine how much Cammie was enjoying Ben and Anna’s breakup.

Cammie flicked the speaker off. “You guys want to come with?”

“I’ll pass,” Anna managed. She kept her countenance even.

Dee blew her shaggy platinum bangs out of her eyes. “I’m in. I need to find Jack,”

“Dance one with me first,” Parker suggested. “Unless …?” He looked over his shoulder at Sam.

“I’ll hang with Anna,” Sam replied, and Anna gave her a grateful smile. What the hell difference did it make? The guy she really wanted to dance with was far, far away, probably in the arms of TBG, the same bitch who had designed the gown the skanky Pegasus was wearing that very moment. She couldn’t even bring herself to think Gisella’s full name.

On the other side of the cone, a skinny guy in a silk-screened Joan Jett T-shirt mashed his face against the Plexiglas and began to lick it.

“Wasted cone alert,” Sam announced.

Anna made a face. “Let’s get out of here.”

“You’re okay? With Ben, I mean?”

“Depends on which moment you ask me,” Anna admitted. “I don’t know what I feel anymore. He dumped me. Logan went to Bali. I’m leaving L.A. I hated the Yale thing.”

“Pity party on aisle one,” Sam droned like a voice over a supermarket’s PA system. She’d heard Anna’s litany of woes in New York, and again on the plane back to Los Angeles. It wasn’t like her to bitch and moan. On the other hand, even she should have the right to whine now and then. But before Sam could temper her nasty joke, Anna spoke up.

“You’re absolutely right. God. I’m becoming as self-involved as the people I loathe.”

“Unlike me,” Sam quipped, “who only thinks about the various ways I could kill Eduardo and TBG—I refuse to say her name out loud—without getting caught. We’re out of here.”

It took a minute or two to edge their way through the dense crowd, but finally they were out the door and into the night. Even though the air conditioners inside had been working overtime, the cool air felt wonderful. There was a slight breeze blowing from the west, and Sam could smell the salt of the Pacific just a few miles away. The rotating spotlights still pierced the heavens overhead, and down the street she could see that a considerable crowd had gathered to stare at the celebrities and the riotous club.

“I’ll miss this,” Anna said simply. “Funny, isn’t it. I was so skeptical when I got here in January. And now—”

Sam laughed. “Now you’ve been Californicated. You thought it wouldn’t happen, and it happened. Watch out. Next thing, you’ll be buying a Beemer.”

“Doubtful. A Prius, maybe, if I were to—”

“I’m looking for Samantha Sharpe.” Anna was interrupted by a loud voice somewhere behind them. “Can you tell me where I can find Samantha Sharpe?”

Sam whirled when she heard her name. There was a Latino gentleman in a black pin-striped business suit talking with the security detail at the entrance to the club. He was carrying a black-and-white-striped artist’s portfolio in his right hand.

“We can’t help you, sir,” the biggest of the security guys said gruffly. “You’ll need to leave if you don’t have an invitation.”

“But I need to find Miss Sharpe,” the gentleman repeated. Tall, almost gaunt, and in his forties, he was definitely not Eduardo. Yet he didn’t look dangerous.

“Hey!” she shouted. “I’m Sam Sharpe!”

The gentleman’s face lit up as he ran over to her. “How lucky, how lucky. I have a delivery for you. Some identification, please? I have a delivery for you.”

“Careful, Sam,” Anna cautioned.

“Are you kidding? There’s an army of security here,” Sam pointed out. She opened her silver bugle-beaded Hermès bag and took out her driver’s license. “See? Samantha Sharpe.”

“Ah, very good.” He handed her the portfolio. It was elegant and leather-bound, easily four feet by three feet with a thick leather handle. It was zipped shut. As Sam took it from him, she was surprised at its heft.

“What is this?” she asked quizzically.

He smiled again. “It is self-explanatory. I bid you a good night.”