Beautiful Stranger (22 page)

She opened a Word document. The blank screen stared accusingly at her. Who was she kidding? What could she possibly write about? What did she know besides the story of a well-bred New York City girl from a well-bred New York City family who decides to go live with her father in Beverly Hills for the second semester of her senior year?

She typed. Tentatively, then with authority:

Untitled Screenplay about
SENIOR YEAR
. by Anna Percy

The Tallest, Coldest Mojito in History

O
nce Eduardo had convinced Sam that Gisella was
not
in New York, had
not
been at the embassy party, and in fact had not been in contact with him since the charity fashion show a few weeks ago, she enjoyed a fantastic—if chaste—week of restaurants, shows, concerts, and shopping, all worked around his busy schedule at the consulate and Peruvian mission to the United Nations. At first she’d been suspicious when he hadn’t invited her to move into his hotel room at the Peninsula. But he’d explained that he didn’t want to announce to his colleagues that he was engaged before they told their parents. Anna was right after all. As his “girlfriend,” it would be inappropriate for her to be sharing a hotel room with him when he was here on business. Peruvians were much more formal about these things; they needed to plan a trip to Lima to tell his parents and his other relatives as soon as possible after their return to Los Angeles. Would the end of August be okay with her? Eduardo had even talked about having Jackson fly to Peru so that both families could share in the joy at the same time.

Sam had seen people do all kinds of things in hotel rooms and be perfectly up front about it since she’d been old enough to spell
room service
. But then, she was a child of Hollywood. And Eduardo was … not.

She decided that she liked his sense of propriety, even if it meant that they would not get up close and personal while she was in New York. But the fact that they were forced to be creative—and limited—about their passion turned into an erotic game. They’d had a great make-out session in the back of the Lincoln Square cinema on the Upper West Side two nights earlier, and another in the rear of a taxicab coming home from a club on Rivington Street last night.

Today, they had plans to meet for lunch near the Museum of Television and Radio, the New York branch of a museum that Sam adored because of its extensive collection of classic television episodes and films. When she read in
Time Out
that the museum was doing a retrospective on the work of Rod Serling, the creator of the classic 1950s sci-fi show
Twilight Zone
, Sam cabbed from Anna’s to the museum on West Fifty-second Street so she could take in the whole thing, including the screening of two newly discovered episodes that had never been aired, and an interview that Serling did in the weeks before he died.

She was supposed to meet Eduardo at one thirty. At twelve forty-five she left the world of
The Twilight Zone
and headed into the humid New York summer heat. Sam had decided to wear another of the new outfits she’d acquired—an Ann French Emonts vintage-inspired white blouse, skirt, and jacket combination she’d purchased on a whim at Darling—but she hadn’t walked more than a hundred feet before it was sopping with perspiration, and she felt her hair, which had been newly blown out at the John Frieda salon, start to superglue itself to the nape of her neck. Ugh. Horrible. Though she could almost hear Eduardo’s protests that she looked just fine the way she was—he always said that, as if she were the most beautiful creature on the planet—a quick glance in the plate glass of a locksmith shop she was passing gave a truer picture of how she looked. Her makeup had oozed into her oversize pores. Describing her as looking like melting dog shit, Sam thought, would have been on the kind side.

Just as she was wallowing in self-criticism, she heard the shrill bell tones of her Razr V3. She plucked it from her Kate Spade bleached straw bag without bothering to check caller ID. “Hello?”

“Sam, it’s Dee!” Dee’s breathy little voice sounded full of excitement.

Sam dodged a couple holding hands on in-line skates. “Dee! Where are you?”

“Hawaii, remember?” she chirped in her sweet voice. “Jack and I are on the beach and the sun is just coming up. And I thought to myself: I have to call Sam and tell her how happy I am.”

Sam couldn’t help but think that if she were on a beach in Maui with Eduardo at sunrise, calling Dee to tell her about it
during
the experience would have been really far down on her list of priorities. But then again, Dee always did things the Dee way. “So, you’re having fun?”

“The best time of my life,” she replied enthusiastically. “We never even went to sleep last night! We danced and then we went for a nude swim—our suite has this private pool—talk about romantic.”

“Sounds fantastic.” Sam used her forearm to swipe the sweaty hair from her face. Hundreds of New Yorkers out on their lunch hours in equally sweaty condition swarmed around her. As fabulous as New York was, at this particular moment she’d kill to be taking nude swims in a private pool and watching the sun rise on a deserted private beach.

“So, anyway, how are you?” Dee asked eagerly.

“Good.” Sam wasn’t about to go into her engagement, or why she’d come to New York in the first place, or her suspicions about Eduardo when Dee was blissing out with Jack. That was a long discussion, and if Sam opened the topic she knew that Dee’s next call would be to Cammie! After that, it might as well be on the front page of
Daily Variety
.

Sam ended the call quickly so Dee could get back to her parallel universe, which did not reek of dog shit steaming under a tiny tree planted in a tiny square of grass surrounded by asphalt, as her own world did at this moment.

She passed two slender, perfect girls—the East Coast version of, say, Cammie—who managed to look cool, fabulous, and completely pulled together despite the crushing heat. How did they
do
it? Sam wondered. She wanted to be one of those girls. But whatever their magic formula was, she didn’t have it. And it certainly couldn’t be bought, or else she’d already have purchased it.

She lifted the hair from the back of her neck and fanned herself. At least the restaurant they’d picked—a French-American place called Mauvais Accent that had opened recently—wasn’t far. It had a small sidewalk area that was largely deserted because of the heat. Sam decided she’d go inside and order the tallest, coldest mojito in the history of tall, cold mojitos, then go into the ladies’ room and do her best to repair the dog-shit damage before she saw Eduardo.

When she pushed through the front door she was hit with a welcome blast of icy air, and headed straight back for the smaller bar. There were only six stools, done in industrial gunmetal.

“What can I get you, mademoiselle, on this very hot day?” The bartender had a cute—not
mauvais
at all—French accent and an even cuter thin dark moustache. He put a glass of ice water down in front of her without her even asking. Sam liked this place already.

“I’d like a moji—”

She froze. Behind the bartender was a classic bar mirror; she could see the entire restaurant without turning around. The place was incredibly busy, with practically every table filled. There was an empty seat at one two-seater table close to the window facing the street. Fine. No problem. But the person sitting in the other seat was a big problem.

Sam stared into the mirror to be sure, blood pounding in her ears like a 767 barreling down the runway at LAX. She considered all the rational explanations. She was here in New York by coincidence. She’d just arrived and hadn’t been at the embassy party at all. Eduardo hadn’t planned for her to be at this particular restaurant at this particular time. That was a coincidence too.

“Your mojito, mademoiselle.” The bartender slid the tall, frosted white glass across the bar to her.

“Know what?” Before the two words were out of her mouth, Sam dismissed all the cockamamie, rationalizing theories and landed on the most rational of all. Gisella was here now for a reason: because Sam was here now. “Send it over to the chick with the dark hair by the window. In five minutes.”

“
Très bien
.” The bartender nodded, after Sam tossed some bills on the bar. Then she stormed across the restaurant, heading straight for Gisella, who wore a fitted black-and-red sundress with spaghetti straps—one of her own designs, no doubt. She looked perfect. And thin. Not a hair was out of place; not a bead of perspiration from the day lingered on her shoulders. That. Bitch.

“Hola Gisella, que hay chiquita?”

Sam’s slang was perfect. Gisella turned to see who was calling. Sam saw the look of shock when she realized who it was. “Samantha …”

“Samantha!”

Sam whirled. Eduardo was cutting across the restaurant toward her, apparently coming back from the men’s room. He wore a dark beige, hand-tailored, summer-weight wool suit; his suit jacket was slung over his shoulder. “You’re … early!”

“And you’re a fucking asshole,” Sam hissed.

Eduardo looked from Gisella to Sam. “I can explain!”

“You’ve been out in the heat,” Gisella observed calmly, looking Sam over from head to toe and back again. “Why don’t you cool down and then—?”

“Shut the hell up,” Sam snapped, then turned back to Eduardo. “And you? Go to hell. With her. You two deserve each other.”

Eduardo shook his head. “You are too upset over something in your imagination!”

“Right, just like at the embassy party the other night. Do you think I’m an idiot?” Her hands shook from sadness and anger.

“Of course not,” he replied. “And if only you will calm yourself and listen, I really can explain.”

“I don’t want to hear your explanation.” Her sweaty hands were balled into fists. She
willed
herself not to cry in front of him. “In fact, I don’t want to hear from you ever again.”

Then she turned around, and walked back out into the afternoon. This time, she didn’t even feel the oppressive sun as it beat down on her.

“You’ve got John Carlos signed to the agency yet, Dad?”

Clark Sheppard laughed his deep, booming laugh. “You think I’m a miracle worker?”

“I think you’re utterly ruthless and if you go after something or someone you’ll do pretty much anything to get it. Or him.”

Cammie was talking with her dad via her hands-free headset, since the LAPD was cracking down on people driving while celling—which, in her opinion, was just plain idiotic. She had seen women driving while putting on false eyelashes, for God’s sake. Why wasn’t there a no-driving-while-eyelashing law? Or a no-driving-while-having-sex law? Really, it was just ridiculous.

Instead of getting angry, her father sounded proud. “You got that right. And no, I don’t have him signed yet, but he’s set for your club opening night, and the rest of the deal should move along quickly.”

“That’s great!” Cammie exclaimed, as she cut around a slow-moving teal Ford Taurus on Venice Boulevard with a maneuver worthy of a Formula One driver. Since she was behind the wheel of her current favorite of the vehicles in her father and stepmother’s garage—a cherry red Lamborghini that retailed for something north of the salary of the president of the United States—such a maneuver was a piece of cake.

John Carlos had finally come into Apex to meet with Clark that same morning. Cammie had volunteered to be at the meeting, but Clark had thought he’d be more persuasive and less intimidating one-on-one.

“So, just out of curiosity, how’d you do it?” Cammie genuinely wanted to know.

“It wasn’t hard. He’s freelancing and he can still freelance. But he’s also now an Apex employee. If he works at clubs that we approve, we’ll guarantee his salary up to a certain number each week. He can choose artistically where he wants to be, and money won’t be an issue.”

Cammie stopped at a red light at the corner of Venice and McLaughlin. “And my club is on your approved list, I take it.”

“The first and only one.”

Cammie had to admit it—she was impressed. There was a reason her father was known for both his ruthless negotiations and his brilliance.

“What about his gig at Montmartre?”

“You let me worry about that. Just get that club in shape for your opening. How many days left?”

“A week.”

“I’ll be there,” Clark promised. “Margaret, too. We’re bringing our whole client list under penalty of death.”

Cammie thanked him again and ended the call. Again, she couldn’t quite fathom why her father was being so nice to her. Maybe it was everything she’d gone through in learning about her mom’s past during the last few months, or maybe he was mellowing in his old age. Or maybe her original suspicion had been correct: he was responding to her because she was showing some initiative with her life. Cammie didn’t know the precise reason, and Clark wasn’t the kind of dad whom you’d ask about it directly, but she did know she liked it.

She was practically at the club, but since she knew the parking lot was still a mass of construction equipment, she pulled into a pay lot just a little up the street. They’d already contracted with this lot for their parking needs, and the owner had said he’d be all too happy to put on an evening shift of employees.

“How are you, Miss Cammie?” The owner was on duty today, and he virtually ran to the Lamborghini to take the keys.

“Very good, Artoosh.”

“A week until opening! Break a leg! I’ll be there at the opening!” Artoosh’s bearded head bobbed so fast that. Cammie feared it might fall off.

“Cool. We’ll talk about it.” She trotted off on foot toward the club. She was serious about maybe having Artoosh as one of the VIPs on opening night. She’d been to a lot of club opening nights, and couldn’t recall one where the parking manager was a guest. It would be a hoot, especially because Bye, Bye Love was located in a former auto body shop. Maybe she could ask him to wear his parking attendant uniform. Her club opening would be—

No, wait. It wasn’t her opening. It was Ben’s. But the more she’d worked on it with him, the more excited she’d gotten about it. Making things happen, having that kind of power, was exhilarating. That her friends were just now gearing up to start college struck Cammie as borderline bizarre. Why go sit in dusty classrooms and listen to boring old farts lecture to you about things in which you had zero interest when you could start your real life instead?