Heart of Glass (12 page)

STAFF INTERN, OJAI INSTITUTE.

Yet Aaron took his arrival in stride, even with impressive kindness. “Right, Marshall, sorry. But honestly? If I’m with Dee, you’ve got no worries. I know Dee. She’s a rock.” Huh?? Was he talking about the same Dee that Sam knew? Maybe Dee really was changing.

“How about we dance?” Eduardo asked Sam. They excused themselves; he took her hand, and led her down the brick path to the dance floor. Earth, Wind, and Fire were doing a cover of “Since I Fell for You.”

Eduardo sang softly in Sam’s ear as he took her in his arms.

She pulled back and looked into his eyes. “You can sing, too?” “I am a man of many talents,” he teased, and pulled her close again. Over Eduardo’s shoulder, Sam saw Anna dancing with Caine. Anna looked amazing in a long white gown, very simple, knotted under the bust. Caine looked like he’d rented his toga from the same costume shop where Eduardo had gotten his.

“Interesting party,” Eduardo went on. “Do you think anyone will really climb into the wine goblet?” Eduardo motioned to an enormous wine goblet filled with grapes that was set up off to the side.

“No doubt. Some starlet will be first. She’ll fling off her clothes to show off the boobs she paid for. Any publicity is good publicity in La La Land.” “You have such disdain for the water in which you swim,” Eduardo mused. “And yet you want to become a film director.” “I won’t be like
them,
” Sam declared. Then she laughed and added, “Everyone says that.” “I think it’s possible,” Eduardo encouraged.

Sam smiled up at him. “I do too. I think. I hope.” That is, if she weren’t addicted to the attention and the swag that came with being Jackson Sharpe’s semi-famous daughter. Who knew?

“Are you chilly?” Eduardo asked solicitously. “I’m fine. I’m with you, aren’t I?” They danced some more, until Sam saw Parker cut through the dancing couples. She grinned, because he was wearing the same tunic he’d worn for his movie scene with her father. He’d probably cut some sort of a deal, or charmed one of the costume assistants. That was just so Parker. He looked incredibly hot in it. That was also so Parker. He tapped Eduardo on the shoulder.

“Hey Eduardo, mind if I cut in? That’s what it’s called, isn’t it? I have zero designs on your lady, man,” he added hastily. “I just want to talk to her.” “Relax, Parker. You’re the man who helped make peace between us. Now, if you kiss her like you did on prom night, I’ll have to call in the Peruvian Air Force for some close combat support.” Sam was amazed that Eduardo could joke about Parker kissing her. She’d almost lost him forever over it. Man. Eduardo was confident. She loved that about him.

“So, how goes seducing Stepmommy Dearest?” Sam asked, when Eduardo had departed.

“Sad, really. I ran into your stepmother by the hot tub. Heavy eye contact and some very unsubtle conversation about just how relaxing a hot tub can be.” “You’re kidding.” Sam wasn’t surprised to hear that Parker had made progress, but she hadn’t expected it this soon. Jeez. The party wasn’t a half-hour old yet.

“Look, I hope you appreciate that this is hard for me,” Parker said. “To let your dad’s wife hit on me—” “You’re doing him a favor,” Sam insisted. “And me. How far did it get?” Parker sighed and then showed Sam the back of his hand. On it was written an unfamiliar cell phone number.

“Hers?” Sam asked. Parker nodded.

“I don’t even recognize that phone number. Did you give her your number, too?” “She asked for it.” “Wait for her to call you,” Sam suggested. “And don’t worry. I will not let you down. No matter what, no one will know it was you.” The song came to an end. People stopped dancing to applaud. Suddenly, a crowd started chanting as a girl who played a handmaiden in the movie, chosen for her eye-popping and entirely unnatural curves, did a swan dive into the goblet. Two buff guys were already climbing a ladder to join her.

“And . . . off comes the toga,” Sam said, watching the girl swing it over her head.

The crowd whooped its approval.

“Where’s Cammie?” Parker asked, scanning the crowd of strategically sheeted people.

“I’m not sure. I invited her. She’ll show. I’m going to catch up with Eduardo. Thanks, Parker. I mean it.” “Cool. I’ll keep you posted. I’m going for some mead.” He gave her a little wave and headed for one of the bars. Meanwhile, Sam drifted toward the buffet, looking around for Eduardo. Instead, she saw her father and Poppy with their arms around each other, talking and laughing with the British producer of
American Idol.

Go ahead and fake it,
Sam thought bitterly, staring at her stepmother.
I am so onto you.

“Great party!” Dee exclaimed, strolling up next to Sam. She was hand in hand with Aaron, who was looking at Dee with something approaching adoration.

“It’s awesome,” Aaron agreed. “But I’ll tell you, once you get straight, you really notice how this whole industry is fueled by booze and drugs. It’s real messed up.” “Facing reality is so much more meaningful,” Dee agreed.

Only Dee could say a sentence like ‘Facing reality is so much more meaningful’ with a straight face.

“What did you do, Dee? Memorize all those motivational posters on the walls at Ojai?” Sam winked at her friend.

Aaron laughed. “Hey. You can’t possibly know how Dee and I feel. You’ve never been there.” Marshall ran over to them before Sam could respond. “I’m gonna dance with Sam’s friend Skye. But only if this is a trust moment.” Aaron nodded. “Totally. Dee’s on it. Right, Dee?” “Right.” “Sam! Hey!” There was someone calling to her—she peered through the torchlit darkness at an approaching toga. “Sam Sharpe?” “That’s me,” she acknowledged. It was a guy in his midtwenties, decent looking enough, with close-cropped brown hair, brown eyes, nice cheekbones, and horn-rimmed glasses that didn’t exactly go with his toga but worked anyway. He put out his hand for Sam to shake.

“I really wanted to meet you. I’m Norman Shnorman.” Norman Shnorman. Where had she heard that name before . . . ?

“We’ve never met,” he went on. “But you’ve read me.” Norman smiled winningly.

“Excuse me?” Sam didn’t understand.

“I’m pretty sure you’re writing the coverage on my screenplay.
Burnt Toast.
Norman Shnorman isn’t my real name of course. It’s Jonah Jacobson.” Norman Shnor—
oh my God
. That piece of shit set in
Brokeback
country about the bikini model and the sheriff ’s son? This guy wrote that piece of shit?
What a talentless loser
.
They should take away his keyboard for life.

But wait. He had the same last name as the third in command at Transnational, Andrea Jacobson, who had funding power on all Transnational pictures. Jackson was in fear of Andrea putting one of her storied size-twelve feet down at any moment. “Your mom is Andrea?” Sam asked brightly, just to be sure.

“Yeah. She encourages me to use my real last name when I’m submitting. But I turned it in as Norman Shnorman. Not that anyone would ever have the name Norman Shnorman. But I hate when people see my real name and then bullshit me because my mom works at Transnational.” His eyes bore into Sam’s. “So, tell me honestly. What did you think of my screenplay?”

Reserved for Bono

T
here were times when Jack wished that he had done what his father, a fireman in New Jersey, had wanted him to do: join the Newark Fire Department, become a fireman, maybe work his way up in the department to a stationhouse chief, or maybe even a battalion chief. Then do his twenty years, retire with a nice pension by the time he was forty, and then kick back and enjoy his life. Days like the one he’d just had made him wish that he were a firefighter.

His internship was in the reality television department at Fox. It was a plum gig and there’d been a ton of competition for the position. Little had he known what it would mean in reality to be a Fox intern. Ninety percent of the time, he found himself interviewing contestants for a new reality pilot called
Triple Threat,
where the idea was to find the most triply-talented person in America. He spent hours watching videos they sent in, or watching them in person during the hours of the Los Angeles auditions. His job, along with six other interns, was to write down the name of anyone who was either in the realm of the possible or so awful as to be amusing.

Triple Threat
made for triple-plus-ungood dreary days. And long ones. He’d left the studio tonight at one in the morning. There’d been no hope of getting to the toga party at Sam Sharpe’s house. Though Dee had invited him, the party was to end reasonably early, because the next day was a shooting day on Jackson’s movie.

It wasn’t a total disaster. He’d called his friend Ben and suggested a drink. Ben had immediately suggested the Golden Turtle, a former dive bar turned way cool club on West Eighth Street downtown. Would one-thirty be okay? No problem with Ben. He’d be there.

“What’ll you have?” the blond bartender asked. Jack felt lucky to find a bar stool. There were plenty of beautiful people in the darkened interior, which was a maze of semicircular conversation nooks, partially exposed brick walls, and tiger-striped couches.

“Bourbon. On the rocks.” He held up two fingers. “Two of ’em.” She smiled lazily. Jack thought she was cute, but he wasn’t into very short hair or lip piercings, both of which this bartender had in abundance. And besides, he had Dee.

“Two?” the bartender asked. “One for you and one for—?” She pointed at herself.

“Meeting a friend,” Jack explained.

She shrugged. “Maker’s Mark’ll work?”

Jack nodded and then felt a hand on his shoulder as the bartender put the two drinks in front of him.

“Hey, buddy. Feels like old times, drinking with you at one-thirty in the morning.” “Yeah, yeah. Only diff is, we don’t have an eight-thirty hourlong calc exam the next morning,” Jack quipped.

Ben hopped onto a bar stool and motioned to the second bourbon. “For me?” Then they clinked glasses. “How youse doin’?” Jack laughed. That was such a New Jersey thing to say. It was one of the reasons he could actually stand Ben—he wasn’t a pretentious richie asshole. Of course, there was only one legitimate response to “How youse doin’?” “How
youse
doin’?” They turned simultaneously. Behind them were a couple of truly beautiful girls. One was very much Jack’s type, in the Dee Young mold, albeit with red hair and bigger breasts. She wore a barely there slip dress paired with spike-heel dominatrix-style boots. The other reminded Jack of Anna Percy. She was tall, blond, and lithe, almost regal looking, in a sleeveless black sweater and stovepipe jeans.

“Drinking alone?” The redhead raised her eyebrows. “That’s not good.” Well, this was par for the course. So often back in New Jersey, he and Ben would pick up girls together. Tonight, it didn’t seem like there would need to be a Herculean effort. But what about Dee? “You know what?” Ben smiled at the girls. “How about we buy you drinks another time?” “How about if we make the ‘another time’ in ten minutes, at our place?” cooed the Anna type.

“We’re very best friends,” added the Dee type. “And we like to do everything together.” The insinuation was hard to miss.

“Another time,” Ben repeated. “We’ve got some things to work out.” “Each other?” the Anna type asked pointedly.

She was clearly disappointed, and probably not used to being turned down. In fact, this might have been the first time.

It was the strangest thing. Jack couldn’t have cared less when the girls slunk away. When he thought “girl” he thought “Dee.” Damn. How had this happened?

“So you’re not interested?” Jack asked Ben as the girls slunk away. He knew he was covering his own anxieties about Dee, but what the hell.

Ben sipped his bourbon. “Anna.” “What’s up with that?”

Ben shrugged. “She’s seeing another dude. Some guy named Caine. It won’t last.” “You’re confident.” “I don’t know, man, I can’t explain it. There’s just something about Anna. . . . Okay, you never hear me say this shit, and you know it. I feel like . . . she’s the one.”

That’s how I feel about Dee.

“Ben, let me just go on the record and say that you’re too damn young for ‘the one,’” Jack said, speaking to himself at least as much as he was speaking to Ben.

“Maybe,” Ben mused. “But maybe when the real thing comes along, you’re a fool to let it get away.” He took another sip of Maker’s Mark. “Anyway, this guy Caine. He’s a suit with tattoos, doesn’t know who the hell he is. I’m not losing her to that poser.” Jack motioned for the bartender to bring another round. “I kind of have this thing myself. With Dee.” “What? You fell for the girl?” Ben hooted. “Mr. Two-dates-is-a-relationship-and-three-is-I’m-outta-here?” “I did not expect to feel this way.” Jack grabbed the fresh drink and took a long swallow. “And I don’t know what the hell to do about it. We ran into this guy she knows—he was all about her, I could tell—and I was ready to take the guy’s head off.” “What are you talking about? What guy? I know all about Dee and her guys.” Jack outlined for Ben what had happened with Dee in the basement corridor at the Staples Center, when she’d run into Aaron Steele.

“Aww, relax. Maybe it’s just a rehab thing,” Ben suggested. “Like soldiers who go through a war together or something.” “It’s more,” Jack insisted. “He was looking at her like she was a cold drink and he was a hot day.”

Ben laughed. “Hey, I know that feeling.”

“Me too,” Jack agreed. “That’s why I don’t want him having it about Dee.” “He touch her?” Ben asked.

Jack shook his head. “She touch him?” “Not that I remember.”

“What happened right afterward?” Jack felt Ben’s eyes bore in on him.

“Umm . . . we went to U2’s dressing room. We drank a couple of cold Guinnesses. Then we spread out a blanket on Bono’s couch and did it.” “It doesn’t sound like there’s a big problem here,” Ben concluded. “And even if there was, there ain’t shit you can do about it, my friend.” Jack felt his fingers tighten around the tumbler of bourbon. The idea of that asshole touching Dee . . . Aw, jeez. He had it bad. Really, really bad.

Ben drank down the last of his bourbon. “Look, in the end, she either wants you or she doesn’t. Same thing with me and Anna.” “I don’t know,” Jack mused. “Maybe you need to fight for love. How long you willing to wait?” “Five months, three weeks, four days, seven hours, and eleven minutes—don’t know.” Ben stretched. “But if she is the one, then in the long run, that wait won’t mean a damn thing.” “Gotcha.” Well, great if that worked for him. But no way would Jack stand by while some other guy—and certainly not a head case from Ojai—moved in on his woman. Jack had fought for everything good he had in his life. If it came down to it, he would damn sure fight for Dee, too.