Tall Cool One (16 page)
“But so what? Dee’s not as smart, and Cammie’s not as talented.”
“Gee, that makes me and my cellulite feel ever so much better.”
Supportive having failed, Anna decided to go for blunt. Sam was a tough girl; she could handle it. “Sam, I have only one thing to say: Get over it.”
“Excuse me?”
Anna swept her arm out. “You’re a beautiful girl. You’ve got that beautiful brown wavy hair and those deep brown eyes. And besides, look around. We’re in paradise! How can you obsess about your thighs in paradise?”
“Because I just ate my weight in soft-shell crabs and all I can think about is dessert.” Sam peered ruefully down at her stomach.
“So go for the sugar rush!” Anna exclaimed. “Seriously, Sam. Why wreck the experience of being here?”
A slow grin spread over Sam’s face. She took in the scenery—they were eating at the outdoor buffet. It was served in a pavilion that had been built with three sides in open air and one side facing the ocean. But save for her and Anna, the pavilion was completely deserted. To their left and right, though, hovered waiters and busboys and a sommelier, in case they wanted to select a perfect bottle of wine to accompany their meal. It was as if the resort were there for their enjoyment alone.
“You’re right,” she declared. “I totally suck. This place is unbelievable. Some people come to Los Angeles because they think it’s heaven. But heaven is actually Las Casitas. And not just because their chef made the best fried soft-shell crabs I’ve ever tasted or because I’ve consumed more calories in the last hour than in the last two weeks put together.”
“Now you’re talking. And I’m really glad you’re here. But let’s have fun, okay?”
“I was obsessing, wasn’t I?”
Anna nodded. “Kind of.”
“God, I
hate
girls who do that. Okay. You’re right. I hereby declare a moratorium on all things in the real world.” Sam looked around. “Where’s the dessert table? I have a craving for Dutch chocolate cake with a scoop of mint-chip ice—”
“Well, hello there.”
Oh no.
Anna almost groaned out loud. It was the one and only Lloyd. He leered down at her and Sam with new arm candy. His girl of the moment was a very tall, very slender brunette in a white bikini. Her long dark hair was done in tiny braids all over her head, and she had a small piercing in her navel. Lloyd wore an open Hawaiian shirt and orange surfer jams. His hairy toes were still on display in the same water buffalo moccasins.
“Hello, Lloyd,” Anna greeted him with exaggerated politeness, then cocked her chin at Sam. “This is Mary Poppins. She just arrived today.”
The girl with Lloyd giggled. “How could your parents name you Mary when your last name is—I hope I’m not offending you,” she added hastily.
Lloyd pointed to the girl on his arm. “This is Jennifer from Wisconsin.”
“Washington,” Jennifer corrected.
“Right.” Lloyd patted her hand, then turned back to Anna and Sam. “Mind?”
Without waiting for their answer, he pulled two wrought-iron chairs over to their table and motioned for Jennifer to sit in one of them. She did, and then he slid in next to her.
“Lloyd works for my father,” Anna explained to Sam. “Nice to see you, Lloyd, but we were in the middle of a private conversation.”
“Hey, way too serious,” Lloyd insisted. He draped an arm around Jennifer and regarded Sam. “I’m down here to do some business.”
“You should see the dining room table in his casita. It’s covered in a sea of paper. And there’s a laptop!” Jennifer put in, as if Lloyd were working for the CIA.
“But we don’t need to talk about business.” Anna tried to redirect the conversation. She didn’t think her father would want it to be common knowledge that Lloyd was there to check the place over for a possible syndication buyout.
“You’re making some good sense there, Anna,” Lloyd said, giving Anna a quick wink okay. “Got it.”
“So, what do you do in Washington?” Sam asked Jennifer.
“I don’t spend much time there. I’m mostly in Europe. I’m a model.”
“Who would have guessed?” Sam quipped.
Lloyd turned to Sam. “So, Miss Poppins. Enjoying your identity?”
“Sure. I just flew in on my parrot-handle umbrella.”
Lloyd winked again. “I assure you I’m the soul of discretion,
Mary,
although from a psychological point of view you might want to consider why you selected a pseudonym that is so obviously a pseudonym. It betrays a certain ambivalence; that you need the cachet of being someone I should know while at the same time you resent it.”
“Gee, let me write that down,” Sam deadpanned.
“Also,” Lloyd continued, “if we look at it from the standpoint of the laws of probability—the class of people here, et cetera, et cetera—the odds of being recognized are high. But if the secretary general of the UN and Sting are happy to vacation here under their own names, I don’t see what you’re afraid of.”
“Know what, Lloyd? I’ve got a great idea. How about we pretend that we haven’t met?” She stood. “We leaving, Anna?”
“We are.” Anna rose, too.
“Regarding you and the surfing teacher,” Lloyd called after Anna. “You might want to watch that fraternizing-with-the-employees thing. It might cloud your judgment.”
Sam shook her head as she walked away. “What an asshole.”
“No kidding,” Anna agreed. “The trip down here was hell on wheels.”
“You mean you drove here with him?”
Anna waved a dismissive hand. “It’s a long story that you don’t want to hear. But trust me, he is truly as loathsome as he seems.”
“Well, then, we’ll just have to ignore the hairy toad,” Sam decreed. “Or is it hairy
toed?
” She pointed toward her feet.
Anna cracked up. “You noticed his toes! Aren’t they vile?”
Sam made a face. “
Beyond
vile.” She looped an arm around Anna’s waist. “So what’s next on our agenda?”
“There’s a street dance in the ‘village’ tonight,” Anna said. “Kai told me it’s amazing. We could check that out.”
“Excellent,” Sam agreed. “Because personally, I am up for anything.” She paused. “Except Lloyd.”
C
ammie couldn’t quite figure out how she’d gotten where she was: driving her own car, with Adam in the passenger seat, on her way to the winter Coachella, an outdoor music festival in the desert.
After the sprinkler debacle at Au Mer, they’d walked down to Breakers on the Beach—another elegant Santa Monica beachfront hotel—and stopped in the lobby bar for coffee. Then, out of the blue, Adam’s cell had rung. After a lot of “uh-huh’s” and a few “sweet’s” he’d hung up, eyes shining.
It had been one of his basketball buds. The guy had two tickets to that night’s concert in Coachella, but his girlfriend had suddenly come down with strep. Did Adam want the ducats? All he had to do was pick them up at will call.
Cammie had vaguely heard of Coachella, just like she’d vaguely heard of the concerts at Woodstock. And wasn’t there some other feminist music festival thing where a lot of ugly hairy women who didn’t wax sang plaintive songs about being ugly and hairy? She wasn’t much of a festivalgoer. Why should she be, when she could get into the hippest, most exclusive clubs in Los Angeles, to see the top name artists? When she could hear U2 at a private party at House of Blues or Usher at a friend’s birthday party? Why would anyone mingle with the unwashed masses unless they didn’t have an option?
So she feigned enthusiasm when Adam raved that his favorite band, the Donnas, would be performing. Really, though, she wondered why he preferred a two-hour-plus schlep to the desert to hear bands she rarely listened to over reconvening at an alternate location to consummate the unconsummated.
God, love sucked so hard. She would have done almost anything for Adam, including things he’d probably only read about on the Internet. Hell, if he’d invited her to Daytona Beach to see a NASCAR race, she would have said yes . . . and she didn’t even know exactly what NASCAR was.
Coachella. The Donnas. This was definitely not her life. But if it made Adam happy, she was ready to give it a one hundred percent Cammie Sheppard effort.
They stopped at her house so she could change clothes. When he waited downstairs, she did a quick computer search on the Donnas. Up came their photo: four punk girls with long straight hair, wearing Levi’s, sneakers, little T-shirts, and attitude. Ugh. So not her style.
First stop: the world’s fastest flat-ironing job on her hair. Second stop: her stepsister Mia’s closet, which she raided for a pair of Levi’s, a Chaminade High School sweatshirt, and a down vest. Double ugh. But it did look vaguely Donnas-esque, plus she’d be warm. February nights in the desert got very chilly.
She drew the line at sneakers, though, going instead with her retro Moschino orange velvet lace-up boots with the three-inch stiletto heels. They’d look hot with anything, even the horror of an outfit she was wearing.
Adam reached across from the passenger seat and squeezed her knee. “You look really cute, did I tell you that?”
“Thanks.”
He took a CD out of his jacket pocket. “I’m gonna play the Donnas. Like a warm-up. Okay?”
“Great.” Cammie opened the CD player; Adam popped in the disc, and they were serenaded all the way to Palm Springs with tunes about sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Screwing a stranger in a car, like that. But Cammie wasn’t in a screwing-a-stranger frame of mind. There was only one person she wanted to screw. He was no stranger. Except maybe to screwing.
“The Donnas are so amazing,” Adam was saying. “Really assertive girls who go after what they want.”
“Maybe they just write really assertive lyrics and pose a lot.” Cammie gave him an arch look.
“Well, it’s not like I know them personally,” Adam conceded.
“But you’d like to.”
“Hell, yeah,” he admitted.
Maybe he’d like to have sex with each and every one of them, too, Cammie thought. Maybe if one of them were his girlfriend, they’d be rolling around in the silk sheets that very minute. How depressing was that? She, Cammie Sheppard, the girl every guy wanted, was stressing that the boy
she
wanted was hotter for some pasty-faced, stringy-haired girls in an overrated band than he was for her. Talk about your alternate universe.
Another half hour brought them through Palm Springs to Indio, site of the Coachella concert, which was held at a polo field. The parking lot was jammed—there were plenty of people hanging around, throwing Frisbees and partying to the music that poured into the night from inside the gates. The promoters were expecting more than twenty thousand people, but since Cammie and Adam were arriving so late, they managed to find a parking spot that someone had already vacated quite close to the small stadium. From there it was a short walk to the will-call booth. Cammie could see how excited Adam was to be at the festival: If she hadn’t taken his arm, he might have jogged over to pick up their tickets.
They got their tickets, then had to walk several hundred feet to the entry gate. The walk took them past an extensive display of massive art installations and abstract sculptures as well as booths hawking various left-wing political literature and save-the-earth info. But the area was deserted—everyone was inside.
Moments later, they cleared security and were listening as a new band started to play.
“Radiohead,” Adam and Cammie said at the same moment, then looked at each other and laughed.
The place was rocking—body heat alone from the twenty thousand concertgoers raised the temperature by at least ten degrees. Some people were sitting in the bleachers, but the vast majority were down on the field, dancing, singing, moshing. Adam didn’t hesitate; he took Cammie by the hand and led her into the middle of the undulating sea of flesh as Radiohead jammed away.
“This is so cool, isn’t it?” Adam shouted. “I knew Radiohead was playing, but I was sure we’d get here too late!”
“It’s great!” Cammie said, lying through her perfect teeth. Not that Coachella was bad or anything. Just . . . primitive. She looked around her—everyone was as poorly dressed as she’d expected. Then she looked at her own borrowed clothes. Including herself.
“We got here just in time. The Donnas are on next!”
“Lucky us!”
“Come on!” Adam tugged Cammie forward. “Let’s see if we can get closer to the stage.”
Fine, whatever. She allowed Adam to lead her deeper into the crowd until they were less than a hundred feet from the stage. Then the spike heel of her left boot hit something hard, and her ankle turned abruptly.
“Aghh!” she sputtered as she stumbled into a couple who sported his-and-hers dog collars that were chained together by a steel leash.
“Watch it!” the female half of the canine duo barked.
“Sorry,” Cammie mumbled, righting herself. As she did, she felt the same heel sink into something soft.
“Shit! You just impaled my fucking foot!” A ponytailed guy in hippie garb pushed her away, then bent to examine his sandaled left foot for damage. Cammie noticed that he wore white socks under those sandals, grounds for arrest by the Beverly Hills fashion police.
“You okay?” Adam asked.
“Sure, fine,” she told him, despite the fact that her boots were wreaking carnage right and left. She wondered if he thought she was an idiot for wearing them to a crowded outdoor concert but was too sweet to say anything.
They got close to the wide stage—close enough for Cammie to catch an occasional glimpse of the Radiohead bass guitarist and drummer through the crowd. The lights were bright; the music was pounding. Cammie could feel the strum of the bass in the pit of her stomach. She got pushed from the back by a dancing girl and from the side by another couple. For a moment, she felt a wave of claustrophobia—why wouldn’t these fucking people just mind their space? Then a couple in deep make-out mode bumped her from behind. She sighed and edged forward. She could handle this. Especially when she looked at Adam’s face and saw it shining.
Radiohead finished their set to massive applause. Then someone came onstage and read bad poetry while the roadies did a quick changeover for the Donnas.