Beautiful Stranger (15 page)
Cammie was taken aback. How could he possibly know? She and Ben hadn’t done any publicity yet.
“Oh, don’t be so surprised.” Martin waved a dismissive hand. “If you’re in the know, word travels fast. And Culver City? Aren’t you an edgy pioneer.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s the name of the place again? Bye, Bye something …”
“Love,” Cammie filled in, as she tapped her feet a bit impatiently. She and Ben had been trying to keep the news about their club under wraps, so they could make a bigger publicity splash when the time was right. “Who told you?”
Martin grinned. “I was at a Bebe show the other day. One of the models is dating the owner of Trieste. Your partner works at Trieste—”
“Worked.”
“Works, worked, whatever.” He fiddled with a pinky ring that contained a ruby the size of one of Cammie’s knuckles. “Anyway, word’s out. Break a leg and all that.”
“Actually, Martin, I’m counting on you to help me break it,” Cammie replied.
Martin’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline. “How so?”
“You and your fashionista friends at the club opening.”
Martin touched her arm to move her back toward the door, as two of his assistants swiftly moved by, pushing an overstuffed garment rack. “And when would that opening be?”
“Two weeks from tonight. Exactly.”
He took out his Sidekick and touched a few keys, then peered at the screen. “No can do—I’ll be in San Diego. I’ve a four o’clock flight from Burbank, dinner meeting at eight. Much as I’d like to help you. Perhaps Seth can come in my stead.”
Across the room, Cammie saw Mini-Martin shepherding Champagne behind a white curtain into what was evidently the makeshift changing area. Champagne stood there, patiently and politely waiting for him to take the hint and leave her alone to change, but the clueless boy didn’t seem to register and just stood there staring back at her.
“I don’t want your nephew,” Cammie told Martin. “I want you.”
“Can’t do it.”
“Of course you can.” She stayed utterly cool. Moments like this, when others would get upset, were her strong suit. “Don’t forget why we’re here.”
Martin’s nostrils flared in protest. Cammie had caught him stealing his own couture gowns at the volunteer fashion show, then reporting them stolen so that he’d get publicity for it. Instead of pressing charges, Cammie had cut a deal with him. In three words, Martin owed her.
“You fucked up royally,” she added in a husky whisper. “I’m the only reason you’re not in jail right now.”
“How could I be prosecuted for stealing from myself?” he asked, his shrill voice belying his confidence.
“Fraud, perjury,” she ticked off. “You seem to forget that you blamed others. That’s a no-no.”
“But you’re blackmailing me!”
Cammie winced. “That’s such an ugly word. I prefer to think we have a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“You remind me of a guppy,” Martin sniped as he smoothed some nonexistent wrinkles on his starched white shirt.
“A gay urban professional? How so?”
“Aquarium fish. They devour their young.”
Cammie smiled. “I don’t ever plan to breed, but thanks for the compliment. Glad we’ve had this little chat. So you’ll make your meeting a breakfast meeting, and I can count on you to be at the opening of my club, with a couple dozen of your closest big-name friends. Right?”
“I really do resent your attitude,” he muttered huffily.
“And I resent that you tried to pin your little scam on my friend and client Champagne,” she pointed out. “You could have ruined that girl’s life, so you’ll understand if compassion isn’t exactly what I’m feeling for you.”
“Well …”
Before Martin could finish his answer, “Cum On Feel the Noize” blasted over the sound system so loudly that all work in the Rittenhouse loft stopped. Suddenly, the lighting changed too—from the all-points-over bright fluorescents to three pin-spotlights focused at the top of the fashion runway.
Then, Mini-Martin’s El Paso twang suddenly boomed out over the speaker system. “Presenting for your viewing pleasure, a Martin Rittenhouse/Seth Rittenhouse Petite Couture original, modeled by Miss Champagne Jones!”
Champagne struck a model’s haughty pose at the top of the runway, and then did the famous one-foot-directly-in-front-of-the-other walk. She looked like she’d been doing it her whole life instead of at a single charity show at the county art museum.
“Go, Champagne!” Mini-Martin shouted. “You are fierce!”
Cammie was impressed; not just with Champagne’s modeling, but with what she was modeling. Martin and Seth had fashioned a flowing, ruby-colored, off-the-shoulder calf-length dress for her that draped perfectly around her body with every confident step she took.
“That’s gorgeous,” Cammie told Martin, raising her voice to be heard over the blasting heavy metal music.
“Thank you.” He nodded in agreement. “I told you I’d fulfill my end of our bargain. I promise you the whole Petite Couture by Rittenhouse line will be equally fabulous. What I’d like to know is, for how long can I expect you to hold one little self-serving error in judgment against me?”
“Come through on the petite line and use Champagne in all your print ads, show up at my opening with your hot-shit fashionista friends, and we’ll call it even,” she decided.
“And just how do I know you’ll stick to that agreement?”
Cammie smiled benignly. “You don’t.” She held out a hand whose nails had just been manicured that morning at the spa at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The Japanese nail artist Kumiko had done her usual stellar job. “Deal?”
“Deal.” Martin sighed
“Fabulous.” Which, Cammie decided, described both her deal with Martin and her life. Yes, she was still smarting over losing Adam. And yes, when she allowed herself to think about him, which was as rarely as possible, she still missed him. But now that she was working with Ben, who was suddenly and wonderfully single, she found herself obsessing about Adam and where he might be a hell of a lot less. He could be in Michigan, he could be home in Beverly Hills twiddling his thumbs in front of pictures of her that he had stored on his MacBook. Frankly, it didn’t make a particle of difference. She’d just helped guarantee that the opening of Bye, Bye Love would be a monster success. Ben would undoubtedly be very grateful. And Cammie was pretty sure she could get him to show it.
Fuck Adam. Still, she couldn’t stop the lyrics to “Bye, Bye Love” from suddenly flying into her mind.
Bye, bye, love. Bye bye, happiness. Hello, loneliness
.
Cammie banished the ghost of Buddy Holly, shook her strawberry blond curls, and marched determinedly to the catwalk to congratulate her first modeling client. Her life was goddamn
fabulous
, and nothing was going to convince her otherwise.
F
ounded in 1989 by Robert DeNiro, the Tribeca Film Center was a large redbrick commercial building in lower Manhattan that had been converted into office and production space for a slew of media-related companies. Sam was here to meet Joe Jeffrey, the writer of
Ass Man
, a script she’d read and instantly fallen in love with. Joe lived out in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn—he told Sam he’d been focusing for the last couple of years on “legit” work in New York theater—but suggested that they meet for lunch on the film center’s garden roof deck.
Joe Jeffrey was truly talented; that much Sam knew. She’d read his screenplay three times. The first time, she’d been struck by its humor—she was still laughing aloud at many of the lines. The second time, by its dialogue. The third time, it was its surprising sensitivity that really came through.
Ass Man
was the story of an unsung Hollywood actor, who, after kicking around for years and getting nowhere, gets cast in a national commercial for a popular hemorrhoid cream. America falls in love with the commercial and with him, and the actor is quickly catapulted to fame and fortune.
Sam loved the intelligent way in which Joe had skewered all things Hollywood, especially the way that the same managers and agents who’d ignored the hero precommercial battled for his attentions postcommercial. It was clear that he knew of what he wrote. Since she likewise knew of what he wrote, she figured she was the perfect director for the movie. And since he’d admitted during their phone conversation that no one else was coming after him to produce and direct his script, he’d readily agreed to meet Sam for lunch.
“How will I recognize you?” she had asked.
“I’m bald,” he’d declared without a hint of embarrassment. “And I don’t wear one of those weenie Hollywood baseball caps to cover it up.”
It was the day after Sam had ambushed Eduardo at work, and she arrived first for the meeting. The roof deck was exactly that—a rooftop restaurant that over-looked the Hudson River to the west and much of lower Manhattan to the south. There were fifteen or twenty old-fashioned round redwood picnic tables with red-and-white Film Center umbrellas shading them from the noonday sun, but the planks on the deck were set close enough so that women didn’t have to worry about having their Gucci heels breaking in the cracks. Dressed in New York black despite the warm summer sunshine, a waitress showed her to the table farthest from the entrance, with the best view on the roof. Sam could actually see the Statue of Liberty off in the distance, as ferry boats chugged back and forth beween Battery Park and Staten Island.
“Can I get you anything while you’re waiting?” the waitress asked politely. That she was both beautiful—with short, choppy black hair and almond-shaped amber eyes—and attitude-free struck Sam as refreshing.
Sam asked for an iced cappuccino, which arrived almost instantly, and looked around at the other tables. Kate Winslet was sitting with Quentin Tarantino a few tables away; they had a movie script open between them. She knew Quentin from a dinner party her father had given but had never met Kate. She was more petite than she looked on-screen, which was always the case. She looked lovelier, too; fine-boned and animated, with a huge smile and a ready laugh that peeled across the terrace.
Sam made a mental note:
Work with her as soon as possible
.
“Sam Sharpe?”
She looked up. Standing before her was an exceptionally short man, his eyes hidden behind oversize black sunglasses. His face was round and pale—he clearly spent a lot of time indoors with the shades drawn—and he was, as advertised, entirely hair-free, save for a wispy blond goatee on his dimpled chin. He wore old Levi’s 501 jeans and ratty brown Birkenstock sandals that displayed fat pink toes. His scruffy, brown silk-screened T-shirt loudly proclaimed
WAR SUCKS ASS
.
Funny how he hadn’t described himself on the phone as short. Really, really short. Like that wasn’t the first thing anyone would notice about him.
“Hi, you must be Joe,” Sam rose, and found herself towering over him. She was five-foot four on a good day, and he barely reached her chin. For this meeting, she was wearing her favorite Imitation of Christ jeans, with a black—after all, she was in New York—top and Joan & David sandals with a medium stacked heel. Even with the heels taken into account, Joe had to be four inches shorter than she was. Fair enough. There were plenty of short people in Hollywood. Marty Scorsese. Danny Devito. Mary-Kate and Ashley.
“I must be,” he agreed, taking a seat opposite her, not bothering to offer Sam a hand. He did, however, carry a stack of scripts. He had told her he was a character actor when he wasn’t writing. Sam guessed that was true, since she couldn’t imagine any other roles in which he’d be cast. Except maybe
Shrek IV
.
“So. Sam Sharpe.” Joe folded his diminutive hands on the redwood tabletop. “You want to direct.”
“Possibly,” she hedged. Not because what he said wasn’t so, but because a lifetime in Hollywood had taught her to never, ever come to the point unless it was absolutely necessary, lest the point turn out to be wrong and someone blamed it on you.
Joe leaned forward. Well, as far forward as his torso could lean. “This is New York, sweetheart. No need to do the West Coast shuffle here. I did my homework. You want to direct; daddy wants to finance; you’re looking for a script to be your first. Tell Joe he did he his homework.”
Sam sipped her cappuccino. “Do you always carry on a conversation with yourself?”
“Even though I lived in Studio City for ten years, I’m a New Yorker. I cut to the chase.”
The waitress reappeared. Sam ordered a Cobb salad with Bac-Os instead of bacon. Joe ordered a burger and asked the waitress to put Sam’s salad bacon on it.
“Don’t overcook it. I want it like ten seconds from raw,” he instructed the waitress, in a voice that could have been issuing orders for the start of World War III. “Not rare. Rare sucks. I want it singed on the outside. That’s it. I want the cow to still be mooing on my plate. And some fries. And a Budweiser. Don’t need the glass.”
Before their waitress—she’d been unfazed by Joe’s brusqueness—was halfway to the kitchen, he whipped off his sunglasses. His deep-set blue eyes were surprisingly bright, almost hypnotic, under thick, bushy brows. “So, Sam Sharpe. You didn’t tell me I was wrong with what I said. Talk to me. Talk to Joe.”
“You are a terrific writer—”
He raised a stubby hand. “Please. Cut the foreplay. We’ve both got better things to do and the food isn’t gonna be that great. Where are we going with this?”
“We’re not going anywhere unless we can actually have a discussion. That means you don’t interrupt me, and I try not to interrupt you.”
Joe nodded approvingly, then spread his arms wide. The wingspan was nothing to write home about. “I’m laying it out there for you, Sam. Here’s what I believe in: betting on myself.
Ass Man
is comic genius. I’m holding out to direct it myself.”
Sam felt an instant letdown. Not that she was enjoying her time with this grumpy screenwriter, and she wasn’t convinced that she even wanted to direct
Ass Man
. But if anyone was going to be the one to say no, she felt that someone should be her.
“Ever directed anything?” she asked, wrapping her hands around the cappuccino glass, enjoying the icy cold against her fingers.