Beautiful Stranger (7 page)
Still, Anna knew that nepotism was as common in Hollywood as anywhere else—if not more so. Recently a major movie star from the 1980s who’d starred in just about every seminal teen film of that era had gotten her daughter the role of
her
daughter in a huge movie. The girl, who went to Beverly Hills High, hadn’t even been able to snag a walk-on in the school play, but now she had a supporting role in a studio picture. As Sam had dryly explained once to her, buying your offspring a career was commonplace. Though Anna wasn’t sure if the children of plastic surgeons to the stars qualified, Ben certainly seemed to think they did.
He opened the door to reveal Dr. Daniel Birnbaum. Anna hadn’t seen him in months—not since the Academy Awards, in fact, where Dr. Birnbaum had taken her aside to remark on how hung up Ben was on her. She remembered him as being tall, with swept-back silver hair and chiseled features, and in excellent physical condition. The hair and the features were the same, but the physique had been bench-pressed, ab-crunched, and squatted into shape that would make Mr. Universe proud. Dr. Birnbaum wore faded jeans and a red Lacoste tennis shirt, the better to show off his hard body.
“Anna!” he boomed as he hugged her. “Great to see you again! Always knew you two were meant for each other.”
She returned the hug as best she could. Even after almost eight months in Los Angeles, she still wasn’t used to the idea that people you hardly knew would hug and kiss you as a greeting. Or tell you the most intimate details of their lives. It was just so … so L.A.
“Nice to see you too, Dr. Birnbaum.” She smiled politely as he unhanded her and gave Ben a warm hug.
“Dan, please,” he corrected.
“I’m glad you’re here, Dad,” Ben told him.
“You asked, I’m here. But I’ve got a rhinoplasty and tummy tuck in an hour and fifteen at Cedars-Sinai. Why don’t you show me around this amazing discovery of yours?”
With Anna in tow, Ben played tour guide, painting a picture of how he saw the club taking shape as he walked his father through the various areas of the abandoned body shop. Dr. Birnbaum hung on every word, quizzing his son about things that Anna hadn’t even considered: parking, security, marketing and advertising, bookkeeping and accounting. But for every question, Ben seemed to have a ready answer. When he didn’t, he consulted his clipboard and found the answer there.
“Where can we sit down and talk?” Dr. Birnbaum asked, after a tour that had stretched for twenty minutes.
“I got that covered too. Come on out back.”
Ben motioned to the back door. Outside, Anna was surprised to see three wooden folding chairs around a metal card table. On that card table was a red cooler full of ice-cold soft drinks, bottled water, and beer.
“No alcohol for me.” Dr. Birnbaum patted his taut stomach. “Never before I cut.”
“So, what do you think?” Ben asked as he took the seat across from his father, with Anna in between them. He gave Anna a bottle of pomegranate juice and cracked open a can of Guinness for himself.
Dr. Birnbaum took a long swallow of Fiji water before he responded. “You know that since I started my program, I live a life of complete honesty.”
If this preamble fazed Ben, he didn’t show it. Anna realized he probably heard it all the time, now that his father was a twelve-stepper. In fact, she remembered hearing the same thing from him at the Academy Awards.
“Good,” Ben replied. He nodded enthusiastically, urging his father to continue. “I like you better when you’re honest.”
“I like me better too, son. How much are you estimating you need to make this club work?”
Ben gave him the clipboard. “Budget’s on the third page. At least, it starts there.”
Dr. Birnbaum studied the numbers there as if they were some kind of oracle. Then he turned to Anna.
“What do you think of this venture?”
“I think it has … potential.” She thought that was the right note to strike, not wanting to speak out of turn about something she knew virtually nothing about.
“You have good judgment. I agree.” Dr. Birnbaum checked out the figures in the budget again.
“That’s great, Dad!” Ben couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. “We can go to your attorney tomorrow and draw up the—”
Dr. Birnbaum held up one cautioning hand to his son. “Hold on! I didn’t say I was in. It has potential, for someone who knows what they’re doing. That could be you, Ben. Someday. But not now.”
Ben looked incredulous. “We talked. You said you wanted to back my dreams because your father never backed yours.”
“And I will,” Dr. Birnbaum agreed. “But you’ve been in the club business for what—part of a summer? At someone else’s club? That doesn’t qualify you to run one on your own.”
Anna looked over at Ben, who just seemed to wilt. “You’re not going to be my backer then. I can’t count on you.”
“You’ve only finished one year of college. You know how many years of school I did? Undergrad and then medical school and then my surgical specialty training. And then I trained in someone else’s practice before I went out on my own fifteen years ago. Look what you’re trying to do—go into the operating room and start cutting without that training, so to speak.”
“Maybe you failed to notice”—Ben’s voice was tight with anger—“I’m not you. And maybe you failed to notice that a nightclub is not an operating room!”
Dr. Birnbaum shook his head lightly and took another swallow from his water bottle. “I noticed. Especially that you’re not me. And yes, I have the money. But Ben, money is not lighter fluid. I don’t intend to burn it. And I would be burning it if I invested in this half-baked insanity.” He turned to Anna. “Help me talk some sense into my kid!”
“Um …” They were both looking at her. Anna had no idea what to say. “Maybe finishing college first really is a good idea, Ben,” she ventured awkwardly.
“Exactly!” Dr. Birnbaum exclaimed, clapping her knee with a hand. “Smart girl. She knows this plan is nuts. I know you’re disappointed, but in the long run, son, you’ll thank me.”
“No problem, Dad.” Ben smiled coldly. “Can you see yourself out?”
Dr. Birnbaum rose, shaking his head sadly as he did. “I love you, Ben. And I believe in you—”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Just go. If you follow the alley, you’ll get to your car.”’
“It was lovely to see you, Anna,” Dr. Birnbaum said finally, giving her a quick peck on the cheek and then making his way out of the club.
As soon as he was out of sight, Ben whirled around.
“Potential?” His voice was dripping with sarcasm. “He likes you. He thinks you have good judgment. And all you could say was that you think the place has
potential
?” The emphasis he put on the word
potential
made it sound like the Ebola virus.
Anna was taken aback by his anger. All that she’d been doing was trying to help. When they’d arrived at the shop, she’d been totally skeptical. By the time they’d sat down with his father, she’d felt something close to supportive, even if she didn’t think his opening this club right now was a good idea. “But I
do
think it has potential!”
“You made it sound like you agreed with him. Like I’m just some overindulged child who wants to play in a bigger sandbox.”
Anna’s heart was pounding. “That’s not fair.”
“I asked you to be here because I wanted to have someone backing me up,” he said quietly, his eyes focused on the hard ground of the alley behind the shop.
Anna’s heart began to sink. She knew Ben was over-reacting, but at least now she knew why. She’d been so carefully buttoned-up about her true opinions when he’d first voiced his plan to her, and then she’d only let her hesitation show in front of his father. He must have felt utterly betrayed.
“Ben, just … listen to me a minute.” She touched his arm lightly. “I’m sorry I didn’t back you up the way you wanted me to. Very sorry. But you have to admit it’s possible that your dad is right. Sure, you could drop out of Princeton. But to turn your back on your education to open a nightclub—”
“My God. You sound just like him!” Ben muttered, tugging his arm out from under her fingers.
She moved her folding chair closer to his. “I know this might be what you want right now, but who’s to say what you’re going to want in five years? What if what you want then requires a college education? It might not even be that long—if the club isn’t a success, you might find yourself—”
“Don’t go there, Anna,” Ben cut her off, his tone warning.
“What are you—?”
“Don’t start lecturing me on not knowing myself, not knowing what I want.” His voice was low, almost for-boding. His piercing blue eyes suddenly had a dangerous glint to them. “Not when you don’t even know if you want Caine or me.”
“Is that what this is really about?” Anna sat up straighter in her hard chair, surprised. “You’re still angry about Caine? You don’t need to be. Caine told me—”
“You know, I don’t want to hear about that asshole. Save it.” He stood abruptly and chucked his father’s empty Fiji water bottle toward the black metal trash can by the door. It bounced off the side, but he made no effort to retrieve it. Instead, Anna saw his shoulders sag in defeat. Then he turned and regarded her. “The thing that kills me is, for all your talk about a five-year plan, you don’t even know what
you
want or who
you
are—you’re just doing what was set out for you.” His tone was icy and had an edge to it she’d never heard before. The glint in his eyes was still there.
She felt her cheeks redden. “That’s not fair,” she said quietly, almost in a whisper. “Don’t take your anger at your father out on me.”
Ben grabbed his full beer bottle from the table, took an angry swig, and then threw it into the trash can too. It landed with a loud, reverberating clang. “No, really Anna. Tell me. Are you the New York intellectual I met on the plane, or are you the West Coast party chick? You came to L.A. to get to know your dad better. Did you do that? Or did you give up on him as quickly as I’m watching you give up on me? Don’t talk to me about consistency, about knowing what I want. You want me, then you don’t want me; then you want me again. You set up these impossible standards and when I don’t live up to them—when I don’t even know what they
are
—you get all disappointed in my lack of perfection.”
“I don’t deserve this, Ben.” She was trying desperately to control the tremor in her voice. It didn’t work. Tears came to her eyes.
“It’s easy to take the path everyone expects of you, Anna.” He started folding up the chairs one by one. Each closed with a hard clang. “So you played around in L.A. for a few months. But then you’re going right back to the path that was laid out for you the day you were born. I bet you tested into the right preschool when you were four and just kept moving up the ladder from there. The next notch is Yale, so that’s where you’ll go, just like your mother and everyone else expects you to.”
Anna stood and kept her voice cool. “You’re taking your anger out on me when you’re really pissed off at your father.” She could feel her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands. No matter how much he was taking his anger out on her, she wasn’t going to sink to his level. And she wasn’t going to let him see how much he’d rattled her, taken the snow globe that was her life and shaken it so thoroughly that the pieces were falling from the heavens to the floor.
“Maybe,” Ben allowed. He’d folded the other two chairs and now reached for the one she’d just abandoned. “Or maybe I’m just finally saying what needs to be said. You came to L.A. to shake things up in your life. Then you met me, a guy who was still acceptable because I had the Ivy stamp of approval. Because when you first saw me, I was wearing a Princeton sweatshirt. And now what—you can’t stand the thought of being with a dropout, a guy whose dream is a nightclub rather than passing the bar? The truth is, for all your talk of mixing things up, you’re too afraid to make a mistake. You’re too afraid to go off the beaten path. You’re always going to do what you were born and bred to do.” With that, he grabbed her chair and closed it with a swift, final motion.
I won’t cry. I won’t cry. I won’t cry
, Anna vowed to herself. She gulped hard so that she could at least make an effort to speak without her voice shaking. “If you think so little of me, why do you even want to be with me?”
“Good point. I guess I don’t. You know where the exit is—it’s the way my father went.” Ben rubbed a weary hand over his face. Then he headed back inside, leaving Anna by herself in the alley. She was alone, in a way she hadn’t been in a very long time.
S
am awoke to the sound of house finches chirping outside the open bedroom window of Eduardo’s condo on the Wilshire corridor between the 405 and the ocean. She felt so fabulous that she thought she might just chirp along with them if she could do so in tune, which she definitely could not. Singing was not her talent. Hopefully, film directing was; she was still on the lookout for a script that would be her first full-length (if low-budget) feature.
With the pesky falling-in-love-with-the-right-guy thing out of the way, she figured the script search would be a snap. Everyone and his brother or sister was a writer in Los Angeles. You just had to shovel through a lot of shit to find the hidden jewel.
Speaking of shit. Holy shit. She was
engaged.
She nearly laughed with joy as she turned to study Eduardo’s profile. He was still asleep, one hand flung overhead, the muscles in his shoulder and upper arm golden and defined. The covers had slid down to his waist. She took in his torso, the lean six-pack, the sheer beauty of him. This dashing, fantastic, smart, sweet, wonderful guy loved her. Really, really loved her, exactly as she was.
Damn. The ring was on her finger. She lifted it and let the morning sun bounce though the diamond’s facets. Brilliant. The guy had great taste in bling. If only her friends could be so lucky.
It was ironic even for the town that had invented the Age of Irony. Anna, who’d been so tight with Ben, had called her late yesterday after her terrible argument with him. Then Cammie had sent a text to mark the end of her relationship with Adam Flood:
ADAM CIAO ON 2 THE NXT
… Out of Sam, Cammie, Dee, and Anna, Sam had always figured herself to be the least likely to end up romantically happy, mostly because she only attracted guys with an agenda: get next to the daughter of America’s Most Beloved Action Hero. And yet, here she was. Next to
him
. With
this
on her left ring finger.