American Beauty (5 page)
Dee led them back to one of the smaller rooms, stepped inside and flipped on a gold-plated light switch, which revealed a massive plasma screen on the wall, plus a small stage. Several chintz-covered maroon sofas and armchairs surrounded a marble table. A small square machine was hooked up to the plasma screen, as well as two microphones.
“It’s a karaoke lounge,” Jack laughed. “You ought to hear my version of Third Eye Blind’s ‘Forget Myself.’”
Then he was kissing her, easing her down to a vermillion loveseat piled with downy cushions. When he nuzzled the curve between her neck and her shoulder, goosebumps exploded on Dee’s arms.
“Don’t sing,” she instructed. “I’ve got something else in mind. Please?”
T
he gorgeous bartender with the waist-length red ringlets handed Caine a Heineken and Anna a small green bottle of Kona Nigari water with a lime slice pressed around the rim, then inserted a straw through the bottle’s small opening with a special hook. Kona Nigari was desalinated and heavily mineralized water that came from a pipe two thousand feet below the surface of the ocean off the coast of Hawaii. It retailed for nearly fifty dollars for two ounces, and had become quite the rage among Beverly Hills’ cognoscenti.
Anna sipped it. It tasted like … water.
“Quite a boat,” Caine remarked, as they strolled the upper deck. A DJ was spinning Coldplay; a few couples danced while dozens of others dotted the area—drinking, talking, laughing, and doing various versions of an upscale mating dance.
“Isn’t it?” Anna agreed. She wanted to introduce Caine to Sam. “As soon as I see the hostess, I’ll introduce you.”
Anna turned around to see if she could spot Sam, but no luck. She did, however, see Cammie and Adam. The sight of Cammie made her smile mirthlessly. It had almost become a point of twisted pride that Cammie Sheppard didn’t like her. Cammie was one of Sam’s best friends, and for a while Anna had tried to be open-minded, because maybe there was some good lurking beneath Cammie’s outrageously sexy good looks. But she was Ben’s former girlfriend, which only exacerbated things, and before Cammie had gotten together with Adam, she’d made it clear on many occasions that she’d be happy to get Ben back, if only to prove that she could. When it came to Anna, Cammie Sheppard was 100 percent viper.
“Hello, Cammie.” She quickly introduced Caine to her and Adam. They both looked at him strangely.
“I didn’t realize Ben had already dumped you,” Cammie said, gathering her strawberry blond ringlets into a bun on top of her head and then letting them fall around her slim shoulders.
“He didn’t,” Anna replied, keeping her voice even. “Ben had to work. Caine—”
“Let me guess. He’s just a friend?” The way she said it made it clear that she didn’t believe it for an instant.
“Chill, Cam,” Adam suggested easily, wrapping an arm around Cammie’s shoulders. Anna smiled. He was a great guy. In fact, she and Adam had dated for a short while, and she’d basically dropped him to get together with Ben again. She wasn’t proud of that, because Adam deserved the best, and Anna knew this much: the best was
definitely
not Cammie Sheppard. So what was he doing with her? Was it that the sex was great? What was it that Cammie
did
that made her so intoxicating anyway?
“Really. Caine is my father’s intern.” Anna briefly explained about her car accident and how he had come to her rescue.
“Another Sir Galahad. Seems to be your type.” Cammie’s eyes flicked over Caine’s tattoo-laden forearms. “Nice ink. See you.”
“Nice to meet you, man,” Adam said, before he and Cammie strolled away.
“So, no love lost between you two, huh?” Caine commented when Cammie and Adam were gone. They drifted along the starboard side of the
Look Sharpe
—three miles out to sea, they could see the marina and the Manhattan Beach shoreline bathed in the magnificent fire-red light of a perfect Pacific sunset.
“Exactly. For one thing, she’s a witch. For another, she used to be with my boyfriend.”
“Who broke it up?”
Anna was surprised that he cared. “Ben. Not to be with me, though. I met him long after that. She still acts as if we’re romantic rivals.”
“Hey, a woman scorned and all that.” Caine stopped, leaned an elbow against the railing, and contemplated Anna. “So tell me about this boyfriend. Ben, did you say?”
Anna nodded. “He had to work. That’s why he’s not here.”
Caine nodded. “I figured.”
Anna flushed. “I thought you and I could be friends.”
Caine threw his head back and let out an easy laugh. “I figured that, too.”
Anna laughed with him. She liked Caine. A lot. “Ben is great!” she said, sounding ridiculously perky.
“I told you, I read people really well. You’re a true-to-your-guy type. Correct?” He upended his beer and finished it.
“Honestly? Yes.”
He hoisted the beer bottle as if in a toast. “Good for you. Not enough of your kind left in this world.”
“Are you a true-to-your-girl type?”
“Most definitely.”
Anna wondered who his last girlfriend was and why they’d ended, but she didn’t ask.
They continued to walk until they reached the stern. There was a helipad back there, for when the yacht was already at sea and Jackson wanted to join the voyage. Just past the small two-seater chopper, Anna saw a massive, school-shaped piñata suspended from a weighted-and-jointed metal rod.
Gathered around it was a cheering crowd; in the center of the crowd, whacking at the piñata, were Parker Pinelli and Candace Lepore. Candace’s mother was an extremely successful designer of hand-embroidered one-of-a-kind coats and jackets. Candace was apparently Parker’s latest conquest. She fit all of his criteria: gorgeous, not all that bright, and filthy rich.
“Anna!” Sam scurried over on white Chloé kitten-heeled sandals, topped by a pair of dark denim Diesel jeans, which in turn were topped by a red-and-white polka-dot Anna Sui peasant top, dotted with seed pearls and crystals. The blouse fell past her hips, hiding the body part that Anna knew her friend liked the least. She hugged Anna warmly, gesturing at the piñata. “We’re beating the shit out of Pacific Palisades High.”
Then she took in Caine. “Hey, Anna,” she said with a grin. “Who’s your date?”
Caine extended his hand to Sam. “Caine Manning.”
“Sam Sharpe. Nice to meet you. Thanks for getting Anna here in one piece. Excuse me!” Sam called to a stringy-haired, but still hot, waiter who was working the crowd with seafood hors d’oeuvres—fenneled jumbo prawns, raw oysters, and Beluga caviar on toast points. “Could you tell the captain to turn north? Ask him to anchor off of Barbra’s place in Malibu.”
“Thanks for waiting for me,” Anna told her. “For a while there I didn’t think I’d make it. I was stuck there in—”
“Take that, Stefanie Weinstock! You ridiculous BB!” Candace shrieked, battering away at the piñata. The crowd cheered so loudly that Anna couldn’t finish her sentence.
Sam spread her hands wide. “Do I have the greatest friends in the world or what?”
“Who is Stefanie Weinstock?” Anna wondered aloud.
“Surely you jest,” Sam chided. “You know. Bee-in-Bee.”
“Bring Indian Beer?” Caine guessed.
Sam shook her head. “Admirable effort, but it stands for Bitch in BMW. She’s legendary. She’s—”
“And here’s to you, Pashima Nusbaum, you ass-clown!” Candace took another swat at the piñata.
“Who are these girls?” Anna was baffled.
“Anna, Anna, Anna,” Sam sighed. “You’ve lived among us for five months. Surely you’ve heard of Stefanie and Pashima.”
“No, Sam, I haven’t.”
“Whatever.” Sam waved a dismissive hand. “Can I help it if you transferred here the middle of senior year?” Then she grabbed Anna’s wrist. “Caine, excuse us. We’re about to do one of those things where two girls pretend they have to go pee so that they can talk.
In private.
”
The Girl’s Back Is Like, Cro-Magnon
“T
heir names are Stefanie Weinstock and Pashima Nusbaum.” Sam leaned out over the white-metal railing of the bow of the
Look Sharpe.
Anna stood next to her, brightly lit in the bow floodlights. “They deserve to be ruined. Especially Stefanie. Graduation week is the time to do it. Actually, their graduation party is the time to do it.”
“I don’t even know this girl,” Anna protested. “Why would I want to dedicate my last week of high school to destroying her?”
Sam’s face grew dark. “Just listen. Stefanie used to live in Beverly Hills. Her father is an orthodontist on Wilshire who was one of the first people who started using those clear braces, you know, like Tom Cruise had a few years back. Remember? It seemed like he actually thought no one could see them and from the mouth down he suddenly looked like he was about twelve except the rest of his face still looked forty so it was really weird?”
Anna shrugged as Sam plunged on. “We used to let Stefanie hang out with us. She had zero style and even less class. She was a project, like in
Emma
or
Clueless
. Like that formerly fat girl, Maddy, who was living at Ben’s house.”
“Thank God that’s over. She went back to Michigan early. But anyway, go on.”
“Okay, so we taught Stefanie everything. How to flat-iron her hair. The right skin stuff. We got her to stop wearing purple nail polish. We took her for her first body wax, for God’s sake! Talk about hairy—the girl’s back is like, Cro-Magnon.”
“She’s hirsute. Got it.”
Sam nodded. “She even came to sleepovers, where we told each other our deepest, darkest secrets. Then her parents got divorced and she moved to Burbank with her mother.”
“So far I’m not hating the girl.”
“Oh, you will. So, the mom married this asshole with a bad comb-over, who invented the dead-fish tie. I think she likes inventors.”
Anna was totally lost now. “I have zero idea what you’re—”
“The dead-fish tie,” Sam repeated impatiently. “Shaped like a dead bass. No one we know would wear one, of course, but they became huge in places you’d only go on a forced march. You know, states with lots of strip malls, whatever.”
“And … ?”
“And every discount mart in the country bought this shit. The guy made a gazillion dollars. They bought an old mansion in Pacific Palisades, right on the ocean.”
There was a table of cold hors d’oeuvres behind her; she plucked an iced shrimp from a silver tray and popped it into her mouth. “The point here is that Dee, Cammie, and I
made
this girl.”
“Um, this actually doesn’t make any sense. You were nice to her. And—”
“She turned against us!” Sam felt bile rise in her stomach. “Why? Who knows? I ask you, does Pinocchio hate Geppetto? Stefanie then used everything she knew about us to hurt us. How bad? She started a Web site called “OinkthePig; every line of it referred to me as Pig Sharpe.”
Anna inhaled quickly. “Oh my God. That’s unbelievably mean.”
“She used to call Dee, have an entire conversation with her, and then claim she never called and that Dee was hearing voices.”
“That’s sick.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So, Stefanie and her best friend Pashima are giving the two-school pregraduation party at Pashima’s house next Thursday,” Sam concluded. She threw the tail of the shrimp overboard. “I want to teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.”
“Sam, this girl sounds awful. But to sink to her level …”
“That’s the beauty of it.” She opened her Kate Spade bag and took out a Stila lip gloss in Strawberry Tarte.
“And if you do, so what?”
Sam slicked her lips with gloss, then linked an arm through Anna’s. “Revenge is best served cold, Anna dearest. Let’s get back to your new boyfriend before he jumps ship.”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” She smiled and shook her head quickly.
“Yes, Anna,” Sam said with a grin. “I know that you and Ben are joined at the hip. But Tattoo Boy is hot. Of course, at the moment I’m a rejected woman, so my cute radar is a little off.”
Anna’s hand fell on her arm. “This is about Eduardo.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is. You’re trying to take your mind off what happened with him.”
“I
am
going to get Eduardo back. I am devising a game plan even as we speak.” As if to prove the point, she dug her ruby-and-diamond-encrusted Samsung phone out of her bag and pressed one of the speed-dial buttons.
“You’re calling him?”
Sam shushed her friend—Eduardo’s voice-mail message played.
“Hi, it’s me again. Just give me a chance to explain, Eduardo. It’s nothing like you think. Next time I call, answer. Please.”
With a sigh, she dropped her phone into the back pocket of her pants.
“Still won’t return your calls?” Anna asked hesitantly.
Sam shook her head, so frustrated. Eduardo Muñoz was the dashingly handsome son of a wealthy Peruvian government official. He and Sam had met when Anna and Sam had been on vacation in Mexico. Eduardo was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris and hadn’t been able to take her to prom due to a family reunion in Mexico. By the end of the night, she’d had way too much to drink, and ended up kissing Parker Pinelli on the beach at the after party. It had been a horror-show moment: unbeknownst to Sam, Eduardo had jetted back to L.A. and showed up to surprise her … just in time to see the lip-lock in progress. After which Eduardo had walked away. He hadn’t called Sam since, nor had he responded to any of the dozen phone messages she’d left for him in the couple weeks since.
“Try an e-mail,” Anna suggested gently. “At least you’d get to explain yourself.”
“He’ll delete it.”
“He might not. It’s worth trying. I know he loves you.”
“Let’s go back to the piñatas,” Sam declared, looking toward the crowd. “I want to sublimate my anger.”
Two minutes later, Sam was wading into the midst of the piñata bashers—they still hadn’t brought down the Pacific Palisades High School piñata—put two fingers in her mouth, and whistled.
“Everybody! Chill out for a second! I have an announcement to make.”
Parker lowered the club. The crowd noise died down. Everyone waited.