American Beauty (11 page)
Eduardo was confused; not only because he hadn’t placed the order, but because whoever had placed it knew him well: they’d ordered his favorite foods and his two favorite wines.
His stomach rumbled. Only now did he remember that he’d neglected to eat dinner. Funny how little he’d been interested in food since he’d seen Samantha kissing another guy on the beach. He felt just slightly sick most of the time. Lovesick, maybe. But he was determined to get over it. Certainly he’d get over her. Eventually. Even if his body kept telling a different story.
“Who ordered this for me?”
“A friend,” the lead waiter replied. “May we come in and set up for you, sir?”
“Please.” Eduardo opened the door wider and ushered them in. L.A. Farm was a terrific restaurant. “Set up in my dining room. You’re sure you can’t tell me who is responsible for this?”
“The gift-giver prefers that we not say,” the older gentleman explained, as, with a flourish, he set down a snowy white tablecloth. Then the three men arranged the food on the table, leaving the sorbet in the freezer section until he wanted it. Finally, the youngest, roundest gentleman held out Eduardo’s chair.
“Thanks.” He took a seat.
“If there is nothing else,” the lead waiter told him, “simply call the number on the silver cart when you wish for us to return and gather our things.”
“Thank you very much,” Eduardo said.
The wine was opened; then the waitstaff departed. Eduardo poured himself a crystal goblet of the French white wine and took a small sip. Heavenly. A smile tugged at the edges of his mouth. Who would do something like this?
That was when he heard another knock on the door.
“Come in, it’s open!” he called.
The door opened. It was the lead waiter again. “I’m sorry, Mr. Munoz. We neglected to bring in one thing. Patrick?” He turned to the front door, where a second waiter carried in something long and cardboard under his arm. He set it on the chair opposite Eduardo—the cutout had been manufactured to bend at the knees.
“Your dining companion, Mr. Munoz,” Patrick told him.
Eduardo found himself sitting across from a life-size full-color cardboard replica of Sam. She was wearing tennis clothes, exactly the ones she’d had on in Mexico the first time Eduardo had spent any time with her. Words were scrawled in giant black letters across the front of the cutout’s tennis shirt:
BON APPETIT. CALL ME.
Sam stepped outside and coolly handed the valet her parking stub. As desperately as she wanted to run upstairs to Eduardo’s condo, pound on the door, and throw herself at his feet, she wasn’t going to do it. In fact, she wasn’t even going to stand around and wait to see if he came downstairs. Better to do what needed to be done, then depart.
More than anything she wanted this to work, but if it didn’t, she would think of something else. Giving up was simply not an option.
While she waited for the Hummer, she checked her makeup in the small mirror that flipped up from her Bobbi Brown lip gloss trio, dug into her purse for her Touche Éclat, and touched up the area around her eyes. Then she checked her BlackBerry messages—she’d turned her cell off just before she went into the building. There was a message from Cammie, who reported that she hadn’t been able to connect with her father tonight after all. She was feeling antsy; did Sam want to meet her for a drink?
Sam was game, even as she mentally counted the calories of a Mudslide. Cammie was at the Whiskey Blue bar at the W hotel in Westwood. The Whiskey Blue had recently turned into a favored industry hangout, both because of its potent cocktails and its central location.
Though it was a Sunday night, the bar was jammed when she arrived. As she threaded her way through the dense, upscale-chic crowd toward the bar, she marveled again at the fantastic décor that had been the talk of the town when the place had first opened. Huge square red and black panels formed ninety-degree angles along one wall; nestled against their base were low-slung flat wooden tables with even more low-slung cushioned high-tech couches that formed cozy conversation nooks. The floor was jet-black slate, with a row of wooden rectangular on-edge abstract sculptures that ended in square tabletops ready for plates and drinks.
The bar itself was a marvel, with a long blond-wood countertop, square brown-and-yellow wooden chairs instead of bar stools, and square red lights at intervals across the top. The effect was anything other than square. Sam spotted Cammie on one of the bar chairs between Thailand’s Princess Duangthipchot—whose hair reached her ass and who’d turned into a total party animal of late—and a Dream Works exec whose last initial was not
S
or
K
.
“Hey.” Cammie kissed her cheek. She was wearing a miniscule hand-crocheted Missoni dress shot through with orange, tan, and avocado-green threads. It was cut almost to her navel, showing off tons of immaculate skin. She looked stunning as usual. Cammie peered at her. “Where’ve you been?”
“Operation Eduardo.”
“Go for it. How’d it go?” She smiled, then motioned to the bartender—Sam ordered a Mudslide.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Or the next day. If he calls me, I’m a genius. If he doesn’t, I’m pathetic.” The DreamWorks exec got up; Sam slid into his seat.
“I hope it works out.” Cammie took a long suck on her Tequila Santa Ana Sunrise, which had half the usual orange juice. “My father’s holed up at the Beverly Hills Hotel and still won’t see me.”
A young Asian bartender with a pierced lip and black-on-black clothes pushed Sam her drink. She thought of all the reasons that Clark might be at the Beverly Hills Hotel, 99 percent of which had to do with him cheating on his aging actress wife, but kept silent. Cammie needed support now, not a reality check. She tasted her Mudslide. Outstanding. Maybe the rum was what gave her the inspiration, if not the courage, for what she said next.
“I’m going to help you.”
“Right.” Cammie cleared her throat dubiously. “You’re going to airdrop down the chimney into his bungalow?”
“No. There was another person on the boat the night your mom died. Remember?”
“Your mother. Who told the police she had sex with my dad on the boat. I know the whole story—I told
you
, for God’s sake.” Cammie drained her glass. The bartender motioned like he was ready to make her another, but she shook her head.
“Maybe we don’t know the whole story,” Sam reasoned.“Maybe my mom didn’t tell the cops everything.”
“Sam. Think. You haven’t spoken to your mother since the twenty-first century. She lives who-the-fuck-knows-where. What makes you think she’s ready to spill her guts to Dominick Dunne? Or to you?”
Good point
.
“I wonder if she realizes I’m about to graduate from high school?” Sam pondered. “Or going to film school at USC?”
Cammie offered a shrug. “How could she possibly know? You didn’t tell her. Your father didn’t tell her. She doesn’t get the school newspaper, and somehow I doubt that she’s a regular reader of your father’s Web page of family news. Do you even know where she is?
“No. But I’m going to find out. I’ll hire someone to find her. And then, I’m—we’re—going to talk to her.”
“We are?”
“Yes. Okay, so the bitch doesn’t give a shit about me,” Sam went on. “Fine. Got the memo. But she was with your mom the night she died. I say she owes you an explanation.”
“You’d do that for me?”
Sam couldn’t believe it—Cammie’s tone was reasonable. No, not reasonable. Grateful and appreciative. It reminded her of when they were little girls, and Cammie had been afraid to swim underwater despite months of lessons at the Riviera Country Club. Sam recalled how Cammie had been playing with one of her mother’s necklaces in the Sharpes’ enormous backyard pool. Suddenly, the necklace had slipped from her grasp and settled like the Heart of the Ocean diamond on the bottom of the pool. Sam had offered then to do a surface dive and retrieve it. It seemed like Cammie had said the exact same words in response. “You’d do that for me?”
“Yeah, of course,” Sam replied now, as she had then.
“I don’t deserve that kind of loyalty.”
“Cam, come on. We’ve been best friends forever.”
Cammie played with the stem of her glass. “I don’t exactly excel at it. Friendship, I mean.”
Sam waved a dismissive hand. “Whatever. Neither do I.”
“Can you handle two favors in one night?” Cammie bit her lower lip.
“Just call me Sam of Arc. What do you need?”
“Are you busy in the morning?”
She shook her head.
“Well.” Cammie motioned to the bartender for two more drinks. “Now you are.”
“S
tay with him,” Cammie instructed. They were roaring down the 405 freeway south, tailing Clark Sheppard, who was on his way to work at the set of
Hermosa Beach
. “Gray 2003 BMW Z8 convertible, two red roll bars in the back, California vanity plates that say CS APEX. Got it?”
Sam took a sip of the double espresso double latte with Splenda from the Beverly Hills Coffee Bean that Cammie had handed her when she’d picked her up at 7 a.m.
“Got it.”
When Cammie had asked her the night before to drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel that morning so that she could follow her father—the goal being a confrontation—Sam had readily agreed. Cammie had found herself feeling grateful to her friend for the second time that evening. This was unusual; perhaps even unprecedented—it helped make up for the many months during which Cammie had thought she was losing her best friend to that snotty East Coast bag of bones known as Anna Percy.
Sam, indeed, had it covered. She stayed right behind Clark’s car in her Hummer from the freeway to Manhattan Beach, and then from Manhattan Beach onto the Strand of Hermosa Beach, with its peculiar mix of surf shops, restaurants, and boutiques. Hermosa Beach was beautiful; the blue waters of the Pacific beckoned invitingly. Cammie, though, was a woman on a mission.
“The set for his show is ahead on the right.”
“Cammie, I
know
.”
They reached the small white hotel that was the main location as well as the production office for
Hermosa Beach
, the hour-long drama that had premiered this season to excellent ratings. Clark’s agency had packaged it—they were responsible for the whole show, from show runners to writers to talent. As a result, they collected an even heftier agency fee than the normal 10 percent. Clark treated
Hermosa Beach
like it was his own. He loved to hang out in the writers’ room, helping to fashion future episodes.
“Let him pull in alone,” Cammie decided quickly.
“And?”
“I want him in a room. Cornered. No way out.”
A few minutes later, after her father had parked his car, Cammie told Sam to pull into one of the parking spaces at the far end of the
Hermosa Beach
lot. The main entrance to the hotel was used only for filming; everyone else entered and exited via a side door protected by a flimsy green awning. They made their way to this side door. Just inside was a security desk, where a single balding guard with a pencil stuck behind his ear drummed his fingers on a Lucite clipboard.
“Cammie Sheppard,” she announced with a dimpled smile. “My father forgot some papers.”
She tapped her oversized cream Balenciaga bag, which contained nothing but a Too Faced face palette in Beach Bunny, a bubble-gum-pink Fendi wallet, and a ribbed Trojan condom. But the guard didn’t know that.
“Go on back,” he told Cammie. “Your dad’s in the writers’ room.”
“Thank you.” Cammie could feel her heart race, but she knew she could pull off nonchalance. “Hey, why don’t you wait for me by the beach? This’ll only take a minute.”
“Sure thing,” Sam replied, then mouthed a silent
good luck
.
Cammie knew the set well—she left the guard’s desk behind and strode down a hallway that opened into the hotel lobby. Dressed to film, the lobby was decked out in beachy, white-blond wood furniture and cheerful puffy yellow cushions. A white baby grand piano stood in a corner near a Moroccan fireplace that looked real but was the handiwork of the production designer. Cammie had been here when huge lights blasted the room, and actors, makeup magicians, and techies with boom mikes scuttled around between takes.
Today, though, there was no filming. She felt like a ghost haunting the scene of its own demise.
The writers’ room was on the other side of the building, in the wing that had been converted into production offices. Just as she was leaving the lobby, she tripped over a thick bundle of cables snaking across the hardwood floor. Her coral Dolce & Gabbana stiletto flew off her foot; she angrily scooped it up and slammed it back on before she strode into another corridor.
“Cammie, is that you?” An over-chipper British voice rang out from one of the offices that lined both sides of the hall. It was her father’s new assistant, Alleister,he of the good diction and pretentious spelling. “Come in for some coffee—I’ve got your favorite vanilla mocha beans. They’re simply divine. I can brew a fresh pot—”
“By all means do that, Alleister,” Cammie cooed, but shot by without stopping, her strawberry blond curls springing with each furious step. Two more doors and she’d be at her destination. The one she wanted was unmarked, with a chipped doorknob.
She squared her shoulders, then burst inside.
A small guy with a big nose, an oversized gray sweatshirt, and a dirty L.A. Lakers baseball cap was addressing the room—Danny Bluestone, young wunderkind co-exec producer of
HB
. Single-minded as she was, Cammie still remembered Anna having had a brief flirtation with Danny during one of her off periods with Ben. No shocker there. Anna seemed to have had brief flirtations with everyone.
All eyes in the room—the seven-person show writing staff, plus Clark—turned toward Cammie, although Danny didn’t stop talking. Writers’ rooms had a reputation for being the most profane locations in America, and Danny was underscoring that rep as he waved a green dry-erase marker for emphasis.
“All right. Let’s look at the story outline. Fucking Alexandra is trying to ruin Chyme for revenge. I ask: Who the fuck cares? Where’s the fucking romance? This is a nighttime soap, so I’ll repeat:
Where’s the fucking romance
? Want to know what our watchers are asking? ‘What’s on the fucking
OC?
’”