Beautiful Stranger (25 page)

That much Anna already knew. Sam had been in a deep depression ever since her breakup with Eduardo, and she couldn’t seem to pull herself out of the funk. Anna had suggested many times that she pick up the phone when he called and hear what he had to say rather than just write him off. They had been engaged, for God’s sake. But Sam refused. Clearly she’d been right in her suspicions about him and “that bitch” Gisella, Sam had decided. It wasn’t like Eduardo was breaking down the gates of her house to get to her, trying to make things right. No, it was over, she insisted. She’d been a fool to believe that he loved her in the first place.

“Let’s just try to have fun tonight,” Anna suggested gently. She was as anxious as Sam was depressed, because she was about to see Ben again. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. She hadn’t ever expected to meet someone new so quickly. Not that she was with Logan now, anyway. The night at the boat basin had been their last together. In the week since, he’d written her a few e-mails, saying that New York was boring without her—all he’d done for days was pack for Bali—and that he wished she were there. But all the wishing in the world couldn’t change the fact that right now he was probably making his way across the world, and she was here, at the opening of her ex-boyfriend’s club, once again alone.

“This could take forever,” Sam groused as they slowed yet again for the intense traffic. Cammie and Ben had sent out official blue-and-white Bye, Bye Love opening night placards for attendees and/or their drivers to put on the dashboards below their windshields, in order to get past a first line of security, whose only job was to wave vehicles through with a grin or turn them around with a stern stare. Sam had decided to drive the Hummer rather than take a limo, for ease in departure at the end of the night. Sometimes at these affairs, the wait for your limo to arrive afterward was interminable.

Anna and Sam had been back in Los Angeles for a week, and in just one more week, Anna would go east again to start at Yale. Before she’d left Manhattan, she’d booked her flight home—a Delta flight late Saturday afternoon that would get her into LaGuardia at midnight. At least packing wouldn’t be hard. She’d just take her Los Angeles suitcases and ship all her boxes to New Haven, to be waiting for her arrival. What she wouldn’t put in her dorm room would go into storage.

God. What was wrong with her? Why was she still thinking
Yale
instead of
Yale!
At the present moment she had just about as much desire to begin freshman year at college as she had to see Ben at this opening. At least Ben wasn’t a total obsession. She’d come home to articles in the
Los Angeles Times
and
L.A. Weekly
about the opening of the club, with photographs of Ben and the club under construction side by side with old pictures of the original business. Anna remembered what it had looked like on the night she’d discovered the place. The transformation, at least in the pictures, was amazing. That Cammie Sheppard was named in those articles as Ben’s business partner was less than thrilling. That there was a small picture of Ben and Cammie in the
Times,
with their arms around each other, was actually daunting.

“We could make a U-turn,” Anna blurted out before she could edit the thought. The Hummer inched along, wedged between two black stretch limousines and a white Jensen Interceptor. “I’m not sure either one of us is in a party mood.”

Sam eyed her. “We look too fabulous to bail. Old Hollywood saying: When you feel your worst, always look your best.”

Anna couldn’t argue with that. She wore a white eyelet lace Betsey Johnson baby-doll dress with white ballet slippers—it was simple and didn’t look like she was trying too hard, which struck her as the right tone when seeing the boy who had so callously dumped her. Sam had on a fitted Blumarine shrunken silver silk jacket with new black cotton capris. The only sound in the car’s well-insulated, black leather interior was Sam’s Oscar de la Renta black alligator pumps tapping on the brake pedal.

Anna didn’t respond, but just stared out the windshield of the Hummer at the chaotic scene beyond the police barricade in front of the club. Hundreds of rich and beautiful people in designer everything were milling around, with their publicists, personal assistants, and agents in tow. There was a bank of movie-opening-style spotlights cutting through the night sky, plus a lineup of television live-remote trucks with their on-air personalities waiting to go live on the ten o’clock news once the doors to the club were open. Off in the distance, Anna could see dozens of hangers-on with binoculars, hoping to do a little celebrity spotting. A return to such lavishly saturated L.A. culture after the concrete-jungle reality of New York felt almost surreal to her.

As Sam finally pulled the Hummer up to the first checkpoint, Anna saw Mrs. Virginia Vanderleer and her friend Victoria Chesterfield hurrying toward the front area of the club. They were two of the leaders of the New Visions foundation, and Anna knew them from the fashion show at the art museum, which they had organized. The profits of the first month of the club’s operations would be entirely dedicated to New Visions. Anna knew this from the same article in the
Times
that featured Ben and Cammie. On an interior page, there’d been yet another photograph, of the two of them looking comfortable in workmen’s clothes and tool belts standing in front of the combined casts of
Grey’s Anatomy, Hermosa Beach,
and the new Vince Vaughn/Ben Stiller film, flanked by bevies of camera-toting teen fans. The actors and actresses were all in workmen’s clothes too.

But it wasn’t the A-list celebrities who caught Anna’s eye—it was the image of Ben and Cammie that caused her gaze to linger. They looked almost perfect together, and so … happy. Anna could still recall the angry, stormy look on Ben’s face when he’d dumped her, the nasty, mean tone in his voice. Having his apparent contentment confirmed in a photo didn’t make it any easier to take—especially not when Cammie Sheppard was in that photo with him.

If Anna was going to be completely honest with herself, the thought of Ben even touching Cammie drove her insane. She knew it was silly. She knew he and Cammie had been a couple before she’d even known Ben. She knew there was no more Ben-and-Anna. No more. No more ever.

And it
still
drove her crazy.

The article had explained the inception of Bye, Bye in glowing and admiring detail: Cammie and Ben had set up a charitable organization called the Bye, Bye Love Foundation, to whom they were pledging a significant long-term percentage of the overall profits of their club, in addition to their first month’s revenues. Celebrity support had started with the Apex client base, but then had spread through the Hollywood A-list. Donations over and above the club profits had already been made by most of the city’s movie studios, record labels, and television production companies. Without having sold a single drink or taken a cover charge, Cammie and Ben’s foundation already had over two hundred thousand dollars in pledged assets. Already, an aspiring impresario in Miami Beach had approached them about franchising, with a percentage of his club’s earnings also going to their charity.

“Credentials, please.” The straight-out-of-central-casting, shaved-head-and-goatee rent-a-cop approached Sam for their invitation. Anna watched as he ran it under an ultra-violet scanner to make sure that it wasn’t counterfeited. The security guy must have seen her questioning eyes. “You can’t imagine how many false ones of these I’ve seen already tonight. You two are fine. Valet stand’s just ahead.” He punched a few holes in the invite with a hole-punch, then handed it back to Sam. “Have a blast. I heard it’s insane in there.”

Sam pulled up to the crowded valet stand. The valet who approached the Hummer wore a tuxedo and a black cap emblazoned with the name of his parking facility, instead of the usual baseball jacket and jeans. Sam handed him the keys, and he gave her a receipt and reminded her that parking would be free if she had the receipt validated inside the club.

“Free parking.” Sam nodded approvingly. “Or at least the appearance of free parking, since they tack the price onto the door charge. I’ll say this for them: they’re doing it right.”

Anna took a step toward a line that was forming near the valet stand, and spotted the fashion designer Martin Rittenhouse and two other immaculately dressed men step out of a white limo. She knew Rittenhouse from the charity fashion show she’d been in where his designs had been shown—and from the dress scandal that had ensued afterward. Then she felt Sam clutch her arm.

“Do you have any idea who those two men are with Martin Rittenhouse?” she hissed.

“No clue,” Anna admitted.

“Domenico Dolce,” Sam said. “I’ve never seen him at an opening. And Stefano Gabbana. My ass would do cartwheels to fit into one of his dresses. Well, there’s always the next life. Come on.”

Anna inhaled deeply and blew the air out slowly. It wasn’t the celebrity designer sighting that filled her with anxiety.
Okay,
she told herself.
You’ve got exactly one more week here in Los Angeles. Go in there, smile at everyone, and make some memories
.

Even if they won’t be with Ben.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Cammie shouted into her handheld microphone, the crowd below her pulsing with energy. “Welcome to the grand opening of Bye, Bye Love! It’s a helluva night for a helluva club and a helluva crowd. Let’s give it up for the star of tonight’s show, the handsome, driven man who bucked his father, opened this club, and is gonna rock the hell out of Los Angeles … Mr. Benjamin Birnbaum!”

Sam stood on tiptoe so that she could attempt to see over the masses. They cheered as one of the old automotive lifts rose up from below the dance floor, hoisting Ben high over the heads of his opening-night throng. He wore a black Giorgio Valentini suit over a bloodred
BYE, BYE LOVE
T-shirt, which featured a razor slicing through the center of a heart. The place went wild as the lift hoisted Ben skyward, a sea of beautiful people applauding, whistling, and cheering.

Sam had to give Cammie credit: when she’d told Anna before that Cammie was doing it right, she had no idea it’d be as right as
this
. Just getting inside had reminded her of the security at her own father’s wedding at the Griffith Observatory last fall, but with even more media. At Jackson and Poppy’s wedding,
People
magazine had been the official news media outlet. Here, Cammie and Ben had welcomed the press; every major media outlet was represented. By barring the riffraff, putting down a red carpet walk as elaborate as that at any movie opening, and having the media cordoned off by a low silver barrier, Cammie and Ben had made it possible for their A-list opening night attendees to have the best of all possible worlds: live television, lots of interviewers and photographers, but no unofficial paparazzi. Though the doors were kept closed until 10 p.m., waiters and waitresses had circulated outside with trays of Flirtinis and the hors d’oeuvres specialties of Jason Travi of La Terza, including his famous glazed baby beets and roasted asparagus.

The doors had opened precisely at ten, and the crowd poured in. A discreet sign indicated that this week’s interior was done by Professor Antonio de la Garza’s design class at Cal State, Los Angeles. Sam had a feeling that the idea of rotating club designers would quickly be imitated by other clubs, because it was just so damn cool. You had both the comfort level of a club you knew, and the freshness of it always looking different.

The Cal State design students had taken the idea of an auto body repair shop and brought it to the next level. Signage and license plates from various states and countries dotted the walls and ceiling, and interior upholstering from cars through the years formed seating areas. Tables were hoods and steering wheels hung from the ceiling. The coolest touch of all was that the students had somehow run an enormous two-car slot-car racing track all along the interior walls and covered it in clear tubing so the cars couldn’t be disturbed. Club-goers could take their turns racing these cars, and people were lined up to do that almost from the moment the doors had opened. The students had even done work on the lights, which shifted colors and positions on overhead tracks.

The rest of the club was equally alluring. People were similarly lining up for a chance to be part of the fifteen-person audience for a series of five-minute monologues by Sarah Silverman, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Will Smith, and Chelsea Handler. Sam thought Chelsea’s comedy show,
Girls Behaving Badly,
which had punked people way before Ashton Kutcher ever thought of it, was perhaps the funniest thing on TV. Leave it to Cammie to get the queen of mean comedy at a moment’s notice. Maybe Chelsea had agreed to do it because she’d recognized a kindred spirit in Cammie.

Within five minutes of getting inside, the celebrity/fashion designer/model/Beverly Hills A-list crush was so great that Sam found herself immediately separated from Anna. But it didn’t matter, because she kept running into people she knew, either through her father’s showbiz connections or from Beverly Hills High. Skye Morrison, a gorgeous stoner who wore her hair in blond dreadlocks, was wearing a dazzling mint green Vera Wang gown and had taken out her multiple piercings. Skye reported that she was going to Bennington. With her was their friend Damian Williams, whose father owned a string of exotic car dealerships stretching from Santa Barbara to San Diego, and who was known for never driving the same vehicle twice in the same month. Damian looked fantastic; he’d lost weight over the summer, and his olive skin had tanned almost as dark as his curly black-brown hair. They talked easily for a little while, getting caught up on who was with whom, who’d broken up with whom—the Anna/Ben bust-up was still big news. Yes, people had heard that Anna and Ben had briefly gone through a “nonexclusive” period. But no one had believed that would last. It turned out they’d been right, but not in the way they had imagined.

“How about Eduardo?” Skye asked, firing up a Marlboro Red. “Where is he?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Sam answered coolly, lying through her cherry red Stila lip gloss.