Cherry Money Baby (9 page)

“Fancy meeting you here!” she said. “Cherry, this is my best friend and manager, Spanner Grace.”

The blonde glanced up from her phone long enough to twitch her eyebrows.

“Hi,” Cherry said lamely. “Looks like you been out clubbing.”

Ardelia wore a form-hugging red dress. Her bitchy friend was in a ramrod-straight black skirt. Even made-up, she wasn’t as pretty as Ardelia. Cherry rolled that thought around in her head, savoring it.

“We were at the club up the street, but I was mobbed, so we left.” She glanced at the diner. “What are you doing?”

Mel’s Diner suddenly seemed toxically lame. Old biddies, the high-school boys. Cherry shrugged. “Nothing much.”

“Ohh.” Ardelia rubbed her hands together. “I would kill for a milk shake. Span, what do you think?”

“We’re expected,” said Spanner. She was also British, but while Ardelia’s accent fluttered and weaved, the other girl’s stuck to its perch, wings clipped. She bet this girl would never try Laffy Taffy — or Hash Browntain, for that matter.

“Oh, right, the thing,” Ardelia said. She took Cherry’s hands. “Do you want to come?”

Spanner and Cherry exchanged matching glances. “Come where?”

“Maxwell’s having a party. Just a small thing at his suite in Boston. Friends and cast members.”

Maxwell Silver. Movie star. Heartthrob. Ardelia was inviting her to an after-hours party at his
hotel room.
She glanced down at her cutoffs and tatty halter. “I’m not really dressed. . . .”

“Oh, come
on.
Nobody cares. It’ll be fun! Besides, you can save me from the boring studio people.” She leaned in close. “Not
one
of them knows how to change a tire.”

Spanner slipped her phone into a tiny black clutch and closed it with a
snap.

Had Vi been right there, Cherry’s response would have been an instant and firm
no.
Vi would beg, Cherry would put her foot down, Ardelia would go, and they’d probably never see each other again.

But.

No one Cherry knew was standing there to make sure she acted like her usual self. Right now she was
Ardelia Deen’s
Cherry, who maybe could do things Regular Cherry couldn’t. Maybe Ardelia’s Cherry could say
fuck it
and go to parties . . . in Boston . . . with celebrities . . . in her Daisy Dukes. Shit, anything was possible.

“Okay,” she heard herself say. “Can my friend come? She’s inside.”

“The more, the merrier!”

“Not really,” Spanner mumbled. Cherry pretended not to hear it.

“I’ll be back in a second,” Cherry said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Vi did not raise her eyes as Cherry relayed the invitation. She contemplated her tuna melt instead.

“I can’t.”

“What?” said Cherry, unbelieving. Vi turn down a party? They were now officially in Bizarro World. “I mean,
what
? I thought you’d freak. Why not?”

Vi glanced out the window. Ardelia was taking a picture with a passing gaggle of girls.

“Cherry, I just . . . with them? It’s too much. I’d be too nervous.”

“Don’t be like that. She’s nice.”

Vi shook her head.

Ardelia was waving to her again. A black SUV pulled to the curb. It was all sparkles and chrome out there.

“I’m going,” said Cherry. “You’re invited. You should come.”

“I’ll just go home,” said Vi, her voice small.

“You don’t have a car.”

“I guess I’ll walk, then.”

Cherry wanted to smack her, to snap her out of it, to punish her for this guilt trip. Instead, they hugged good-bye stiffly, and it was Cherry who held on a little too long. She wandered back outside, realizing too late she’d stuck Vi with the bill, but she was too embarrassed to go back. Suddenly Mel’s Diner was the warmest, friendliest place ever, and she was stepping into a cold night with strangers.

“All good?” Ardelia said.

Cherry nodded. She climbed into the plush SUV, glancing back. Vi was texting, sipping Cherry’s milk shake. She looked content enough.

The car, the party, the jealous gaggle on the sidewalk . . . and Cherry was
something,
but
all good
wasn’t it.

Stars of
Alive and Unmarried
stayed at the Parcae, a scalloped and terraced hotel in the shadow of the John Hancock building. At midnight the facade was lit white as a wedding cake, and men in gold frogging held open the doors.

Cherry felt her pockets.

“Did you lose something?” Ardelia asked.

“Should I tip the door guy?”

Ardelia laughed and took her arm. It was just the three of them in the elevator, and Cherry was possessed by a childhood impulse to push all the buttons. But this elevator had no buttons at all.

“It’ll take us straight to the master suites,” Ardelia explained.

“First time in a lift?” Spanner asked.

“No. Obviously,” said Cherry. “And in America we call them
elevators.
” This was out before Cherry realized she might also be insulting Ardelia. Spanner pounced.

“Did you hear that?” Spanner asked her friend. “
Elevator.
What a novel word! Why, I must remember it next time I’m taking the
lorry
to the
loo
to find my
bumbershoot.
”

“Oh, stop it,” Ardelia said, smirking.

“Is this the new thing in America?” Spanner asked Cherry’s reflection. She pointed lazily to Cherry’s cutoffs.

“Sort of.”

“Very rustic.”

“Well, I didn’t know I was going out tonight.”

“No, Spanner’s right.” Ardelia tapped her chin.

“She is?”

There was an Emergency Stop button. She could always hit that. Why wasn’t there a Teleport Home button?

Ardelia snapped her fingers. “I know! Let’s switch shoes.”

Cherry obeyed, exchanging her frayed Converse for Ardelia’s pumps. Unused to high heels, Cherry tottered over the other girls. She considered the effect, Ardelia in her gown and sneakers, Cherry in cutoffs and blazing red stilettos.

“Voilà,” said Ardelia. “Now it’s
fashion.
”

As if this were the secret password, the elevator
ding
ed and the doors slid open. There were five master suites on this floor, including Ardelia’s. Maxwell’s was in the northeast corner, down a length of vanilla carpet, past two pearly double doors. Music, voices, and the chatter of glasses and ice cubes sounded on the other side. Ardelia pulled the silvery handle, grinning at Cherry, and then they were in.

She couldn’t make out anything about the room beyond its size, so thick was the press of human bodies, satin, and skin. A fog of perfume, beer, and pot smoke hung over the crowd. A yellow feather bobbled toward the bar, an outcropping of someone’s ridiculous hat. There was a woman’s shoe in the chandelier.

“Ardelia!”

Something shiny entered the clearing by the door where Ardelia, Cherry, and Spanner stood. The shiny thing pressed a martini glass into Cherry’s hand and swallowed Ardelia in a hug.

“Maxwell!”

Maxwell Silver was dressed in a glossy black shirt with the top three buttons unfastened. In her new heels, Cherry had three inches on the man she and Vi had swooned over in
Heavy Metal Pirates.
Maxwell’s hand cupped Ardelia’s lower back. She seemed to lift a little with the pressure. The costars exchanged words from the sides of their equally perfect mouths, Maxwell letting slip some inside joke that reduced Ardelia to giggles. Cherry felt a flash of jealousy and took a sip from Maxwell’s martini. Gasoline and vinegar.

“Max, this is Cherry,” Ardelia said, gesturing Vanna White–style. Maxwell’s eyes followed Ardelia’s gesture down to Cherry’s toes and up again.

“Charmed.” He offered his hand, which Cherry moved to shake, but he dived for the martini glass instead. “In the business?”

“She isn’t!” Ardelia said with glee.

“Thank Christ. This way.”

Maxwell took her hand now, and Cherry was dragged bodily through the masses while her mind still wobbled by the door:
Maxwell Silver had checked her out.

Maxwell held one hand; Ardelia trailed behind holding the other. Bodies parted for their host. Then they were at the bar, something out of Ariel’s undersea bower in
The Little Mermaid.

“What’s your poison?” It took Cherry a beat to realize Maxwell was addressing
her.

“A . . . beer?”

She wasn’t a drinker. You had to stay soberish to keep an eye on Vi, whose hair usually needed holding. But she was no one’s designated tonight. The bartender handed her a brown bottle with a German label.

“So what
do
you do, if you don’t do what we do?” Maxwell said in his ticklish accent.

“Bup!” said Ardelia, removing Maxwell’s hand from where it brushed Cherry’s — she hadn’t even noticed it there. “Not this one, Max.”

“I’m making
conversation.
”

“On the make, more like it.”

Maxwell groaned. “She’s such a Mama Hen, isn’t she?”

Again, Cherry didn’t realize she was being spoken to. She kept forgetting this wasn’t happening on a screen but live, and she was an active participant.

Ardelia’s hand was on her right arm now, Maxwell’s on her left. “Don’t let those blue eyes fool you. He’s a scoundrel.”

She was supposed to say something now, and not wanting to look like an idiot mute, Cherry said, “Don’t worry. That play don’t play.”

It was an old line, but Maxwell cackled. “
‘That play don’t play.’
I love it! Can I use that?”

Cherry was mid-sip, and by the time she’d lowered her bock lager or whatever it was, a pale hand had snaked around Maxwell’s waist and he turned away.

Cherry hid behind her beer bottle. “What am I doing here?”

Ardelia puffed a stray strand of inky hair. “I know, it is a bit much, isn’t it? But I mean it about Maxwell.” The humor left her voice. She was like a news anchor transitioning from the weather report to “Buyer Beware.” She squeezed Cherry’s elbow. “Steer clear of him. He’s the devil incarnate.”

Ardelia guided Cherry through the room, introducing her to beautiful people of both sexes and the occasional distinguished old fart with white hair and a black turtleneck. But soon Ardelia was called away, and Cherry had to fend for herself. She was good at parties, typically, but these people talked about things entirely foreign to her, about places she’d never heard of, like Croatia, and the best place to buy organic cheese. But more than anything else, movie people talked about
themselves.
They talked about other times they had been at parties and talked about themselves.

And then, as sometimes happened, something clicked in Cherry’s head, and she suddenly
got
these people, from their understated shoes to their overstated hair. They were just popular kids. Perhaps
slightly more popular
popular kids, but popular kids, nonetheless. Popular kids liked to shine, but not at the center of anything. A crowd of popular kids wanted to be a
halo,
which was why they always stood in circles (dorks and losers lined up against the wall like a mass execution). Once she understood this, she instantly relaxed. By midnight a crowd of models, actors, and older film people encircled her. The beer was making her loose, and the added height of the heels gave her authority. She was a tipsy Titan. A wobbly Amazon.

“So it was me, Vi, and Sharon Hanniford,” she explained, revving up another story.

“The one with the lazy eye?” a girl in a teal cocktail dress asked.

“You’re thinking of Sharon Gregory,” said her date. “Sharon Hanniford’s the one from the beer-bottle story. Right?”

“Exactly,” said Cherry. “So, Sharon’s all heartbroken because of the whole Danny cheating thing. I mean, the girl is
tore up.
So, I got this box of M-80s —”

“Pardon,”
said a French fashion model. “M-80s?”

“Fireworks,” said the model’s husband, also a model.

“Yeah, but
serious
fireworks,” Cherry corrected. “Vi’s cousin brought them down from Canada.
Anyway,
we got this box of M-80s, and we pull through the parking garage where Danny is in the backseat with this skank from Aubrey Private.”

“That asshole,” said the girl in the cocktail dress.