Heart of Glass (7 page)
—Ben
Anna refolded the note. Ben was downstairs.
Her
Ben. Except that she needed to not think of him that way now. Too much had happened, and she couldn’t pretend otherwise.
She’d actually met him before she’d even arrived at LAX, because they were on the same flight from New York on New Year’s Day. He’d been a freshman at Princeton then, and would be a sophomore this coming fall. He wore his brown hair a little shaggy, had eyes the color of the Pacific on a sunny day, and had the toned build of a swimmer. He was also smart and sweet and sexy, and he’d been the boy to whom she’d lost her virginity. She had some great memories of her time with Ben. That was one of them.
Was that the reason that she’d thought he was “the one” for so long, and why she sometimes still thought he’d be the one forever? She sighed. There had been too much deceit, both major and minor. He’d stranded her on his father’s yacht not far from Joe’s Clams in Marina del Rey on the same night that they’d met. There’d been the Anna Nicole Smith look-alike (much younger, brunette version) who’d surprised her at the front door of his parents’ house, and whom he’d actually taken to her junior prom. Not that anything bad had happened with that girl—what was her name, Maddie?—but Ben hadn’t exactly been up front with her about it. And then, finally, there was a girl from Princeton who was basically stalking him, but whom Ben didn’t mention anything about until it was too late. It was all too much and too angst-y for her. So when Caine Manning came along via her father’s investment firm—a little older and, it seemed to Anna now, a lot more mature—she had been intrigued. Caine was different from any boy she’d ever known. He drove a pickup truck. Ben drove a Beemer. Ben lived in Beverly Hills. Caine lived in Venice. Ben’s arms were tan from the tennis court and the pool at the Riviera Country Club. Caine’s arms were tattooed with reproductions of Botticelli paintings.
Anna rested her forehead in her hands,
She still held the note. Ben was downstairs. Right now. And that’s how she came to be sitting across from him in the gazebo in her father’s huge backyard fifteen minutes later.
“Anna.”
Her insides did a somersault when he spoke her name. His voice gave her goose bumps. His looks, too. He wore old jeans and a polo shirt the same blue as his eyes. She was wearing what she’d had on when she got his note: ancient white cotton pants and a white men’s T-shirt, green flip-flops, a ponytail, and no makeup.
“Nice out here,” he commented, passing her a cardboard cup of coffee. He placed the rugelach between them on top of a white paper bag. “Doesn’t even feel like Beverly Hills.” “I love it, too.” Anna ran a finger over the natural blond wood of the gazebo, wood that had been lovingly hand sanded to the texture of velvet. “I hardly ever come out here; maybe I spent too many years living in New York to even remember to think about a backyard.” She sipped the coffee.
Ben bit into a cherry rugelach and stretched out on the long wooden bench seat that circled the gazebo. “So, let’s start with the basics. How are you?” “I’m good.” Anna winced. Ugh. What a banal thing to say. How could she possibly feel awkward with him after everything they’d experienced together? She tasted the hot coffee just for something to do and hoped he hadn’t noticed the goose bumps on her arms.
“So, community service for
trespassing
?” He sounded incredulous.
She shrugged and pulled her knees up to her chest. “Some vendetta between Cammie’s father and this guy, I guess. Cammie and I got stuck in the middle. In some bizarre way I think it’s going to be fun. We’re helping with a charity fashion show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It’s a week from Wednesday night. I love that museum. Anyway, that’s our community service.” “Ah yes, the Anna Percy who is up for new experiences. We shared some of those.” He sipped his own coffee and smiled.
Damn. Maybe he
had
noticed her goose bumps. Before the fact, she’d wondered what it would be like to have sex, and then, more specifically, what it would be like with Ben. As it turned out, it was wonderful, amazing, and fantastic. It took her out of her head, something that rarely happened. When Ben made love to her, she was all feeling.
“You ought to come by the club sometime,” Ben suggested casually. “Maybe on a Monday.”
“You know I’m not really the clubbing type.” He smiled. “That’s why I said Monday. I had this idea and we’re trying it out, because Trieste is pretty empty on Mondays, anyway. So we’re doing some different things in the different rooms. There are poetry readings on the back patio, jazz in the dance room, and short reader’s theater plays in the main bar, all of which are actually set in bars. It’s pretty cool. Mondays draw a very different kind of crowd. No second-generation club kids, no wanna-bes from the Valley. I think you’d like it.” “This was your idea?” Anna was impressed.
Ben nodded, broke off more of a rugelach, and chewed it before he answered. “I’ve been going on basically no sleep, but it’s incredibly exciting. We did the first Trieste Monday last week, and we’ve got another one this coming Monday. The owner knows Chick Corea—amazing jazz pianist—and he’ll be playing as a surprise at midnight. Then we’ve got some really cool one-act plays.” Wow. She
never
would have expected this from Ben. He’d never talked about being a club promoter. “Maybe I’ll check it out.” He smiled winningly. “I’d like that.” Then, ever so casually, he asked, “You still seeing that guy with the tattoos?” “Caine. Yes. We’re . . . dating.” It was weird. She felt sheepish saying it.
“Dating.” Ben laughed. “Wow, does anybody really
date
anymore?”
Anna stiffened. “Evidently I do.”
“Evidently you do. The two of you could come by, then. Drinks are on me.” “Okay, thank you.” She sipped her coffee, wondering why he was being quite so accepting of her
dating
, when the person she was
dating
was not him.
“This is amazing!” Anna exclaimed, as the Ferris wheel swung skyward into the cool night.
“Welcome to the best wheel west of the California coastline. Which also happens to be the only Ferris wheel west of the California coastline.” Caine had picked her up at nine as promised. But instead of the pickup truck, he was on a black 1960s BSA motorcycle that he said he’d restored himself, complete with an extra white helmet for Anna. “Put it on,” he ordered with a grin.
She did, with some trepidation, never having been on a motorcycle before. Yet within three minutes she was completely comfortable, as Caine followed Sunset Boulevard to Barrington, then cut over to San Vicente and took it east to the ocean, dodging between cars with total confidence. It was a warm night, and she clung to his body, picturing how they must look to passersby.
Like lovers
, she thought.
We must look like lovers.
He said he had one more surprise in store, and pulled the bike up near the Santa Monica pier, which jutted into the sea off of the Pacific Coast Highway. At the west end was an enormous Ferris wheel.
“A hundred and thirty feet high, and powered by the sun,” he told her.
“Even at night?” she joshed. She’d taken enough high school science to know that solar energy could be stored in batteries, just like any other kind of energy.
“Let’s go and find out.” He looked at the crowded parking area. “Two thousand Los Angelenos can’t be wrong.” Fifteen minutes later, they’d walked through the polyglot mass of humanity that was the Santa Monica pier on a warm summer night, paid their admission tickets for the wheel, climbed into one of the yellow cabs, and gone spinning up into the night. It was fantastic. The night was crystalline, and a bright full moon hung in the west like a beacon of adventure. Around and around they went—two, three, four trips on the wheel, Caine happily assuring the operator that he was good for the fare. Then he slipped the guy an extra twenty dollars.
“That’s nice of you,” Anna noted. “I have an ulterior motive.”
Caine offered no more information than that, but Anna’s curiosity was satisfied five minutes later, when the wheel slowed as they reached the top and then stopped dead.
“You paid him for this.”
“Guilty as charged. Check out the view.” Caine put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around so that they could look east, toward the city. It shone like a constellation in the night, streams of car headlights moving in all directions and up above, Anna could see the lights of the planes as they stacked up to land at LAX.
“It’s . . . it’s like a dream.” Anna found herself thinking of Champagne and wondering whether she’d ever had a guy take her to this wheel, then tip the operator so that the cab would stay perched high in the sky.
“What are you thinking about?” Caine asked softly.
“This girl I met yesterday. Funny name. Champagne. She’s in the at-risk girls’ program. I guess she begged to help out with the fashion show, and they let her.”
“What about her?”
“Just . . . I don’t even know her, but the woman who runs the fashion show basically accused her of theft, based on no evidence. She was so patronizing, and this girl seemed so sweet. . . .”
“Fill me in. I’m not tracking.”
Anna explained what Virginia had said about Champagne stealing Martin Rittenhouse’s gown, even though she didn’t have any proof at all. He whistled gruffly. “That sucks. Sometimes people with money act like not having it is the result of a character defect. Such patronizing bullshit.”
Anna agreed, and found Caine’s reaction so close to her own that she impetuously leaned over and kissed him, the first time she’d ever done such a thing in her life.
The kiss lasted until the wheel started moving again. And then for a while longer after that. It turned out to be both fun and educational. Anna learned in thirty seconds that Ben wasn’t the only great kisser in L.A.
C
ammie found herself that night in an uncharacteristic position. She literally had nothing to do. Dee was off with Jack doing whatever Dee and Jack did. Ditto Sam and Eduardo, who were crashing at Eduardo’s condo on the Wilshire corridor.
She couldn’t even call Adam. He and his parents had gone on a three-day canoe trip and left their cell phones behind. Unimaginable, but true. Nor were any of her other usual suspects available. Krishna and Skye weren’t due back from London until Sunday, while Ashleigh and Damian were slumming at Hedonism III in Jamaica.
So Cammie decided to go out by herself. Maybe she’d just check out Trieste, where Ben still worked. Even after all the press coverage it had received the month before—coverage that normally turned a hot club into burnt toast—Trieste remained next to impossible to get into, with Jacinda Barrett reportedly having to wait forty-five minutes to be admitted and Jessica never making it to within spitting distance of the VIP section.
Of course, the best reason to crash Trieste was Ben Birnbaum. Despite being with Adam, the truth was that Cammie still hadn’t gotten over getting dumped by Ben at the end of her junior year. Adam brought out the good in her. Ben brought out the bad. Good was often good. Bad was sometimes so much better.
She put on a new outfit she’d found at Fred Segal—a D&G ivory miniskirt and a Robert Graham magenta brocade jacket that ended four inches above the top of the skirt. She did her makeup, spritzed her strawberry blond curls, then checked out her reflection in her full-length mirror.
I would do me
. No higher compliment could be given.
For the last week, she’d been driving her father’s new cherry red Lamborghini. Even for Los Angeles, capital of the universe of the internal combustion engine, the Lamborghini was something special. At every stoplight there were admiring stares from passersby. She took it to Trieste, tossed the keys to the valet, and a moment later was waved into the club by the very hot, very bald doorman. He was new, she noted. Very tasty. She favored him with a wink as she shimmied past. No block-long line or velvet rope for her.
As she made her way to the juice bar at the back, her typical club experience began. That is, she was hit on early and often. No to the businessman from France.
No to the lipstick lesbian from Hancock Park. No to the race-car driver from Holland. There was only one guy at Trieste she wanted to hang with. And there he was, behind the juice bar, making the famous fortified fruit smoothies for which this patio was becoming famous.
“Well, well.” She sidled up to him, thinking it was impossible for Ben Birnbaum to look anything but hot, even in a basic white Trieste staff T-shirt and black Diesel jeans. “If it isn’t my favorite bartender.” “And if it isn’t my favorite ex-girlfriend,” Ben replied. He flashed a huge, handsome grin. “What can I get you?” Cammie flashed her most winning smile at him and resisted her natural inclination, which was to say,
You. Me. And the Presidential Suite at the Hotel Bel-Air.
“What’s the specialty concoction tonight from the Ben Birnbaum magic blender?” “Coconut crème-papaya smoothie with a vitamin B boost. Will make you forget that Jamba Juice was ever invented.” “I’ll take a half,” she decided, “and the other half Jamaican rum.” Ben laughed. “Make it a quarter, and you got it. Go have a seat, I’ll bring it to you.” Cammie spotted an empty pair of red-and-white striped lawn chairs under a eucalyptus tree and commandeered them both, putting her feet up on the one that would be Ben’s. While he blended her smoothie, she fended off an approach from a Japanese artist dressed in severe black, and also a cute guy who claimed to be one of the writers of the new hit show
Heroes.
Suddenly, a half-glass of coconut smoothie materialized in front of her—Ben had snaked it around from behind. “I made it a third rum. Call it a compromise,” he murmured in her ear, sending shivers down her spine. “Enjoy.” Cammie raised her glass, which held the same off-white, creamy concoction as Ben’s did.
“Here’s to ex-boyfriends and -girlfriends,” she proposed. “Because you never know.” Ben clinked her glass and then sat in the chair she’d saved for him. “I’ll drink to that.” “So, speaking of . . . How are you dealing with Ben-and-no-Anna?” Cammie tasted the drink. It was easily one-third rum. And not bar pour, either. Good stuff.
