Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [4]
“Leslie, over here!” the photographers all scream at once at this beautiful blonde who’s grinning seductively. The way the photographers are jostling one another and screaming her name with such glee, you’d swear they were trying to get snaps of Julia Roberts, or at least the president or the queen or something. The fact that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Leslies with bit parts in movies like the mediocre one we’re about to see and one, if that, will actually continue to work in Hollywood after this current role, certainly doesn’t seem to be at the forefront of the photographers’ collective minds. But Leslie handles her moment well.
Stephanie and I decide to make a run for it to avoid being caught in the back of one of these shots. It happened to Stephanie once—a picture of Lindsay Lohan was almost ruined by the image of Stephanie, an extremely unflattering image of her at that, doing a shot with someone the picture didn’t capture (that is, me) and the photo ran in about a hundred magazines. Stephanie has yet to live it down.
She takes off at a good pace but I’m waylaid by Leslie, the actress, as she steps backward, lodging her seemingly ten-inch red heel into my big left toe in what feels like an instant toe decapitation—if toes had heads. She starts to trip backward but her publicist catches her, glaring at me for daring to slide my foot under her client’s $700 shoe-slash-instrument-of-torture. For an anorexic who couldn’t weigh more than ninety-eight pounds, Leslie sure knows how to put some weight into her shoe. Then again, the shoe probably weighs more than her. I limp up to Stephanie, who hands me a bag of free popcorn with butter sympathetically.
“Is it bleeding?” she asks simply.
I shake my head. “Feels more like an internal thing,” I answer. “Like maybe she crushed the toe bone. Do toes have bones?”
“Sure,” she shrugs. “Hospital?”
“Oh, God, no,” I answer as Matt Dillon walks in and waves at me. I wave back until I realize he’s actually waving at the manly looking woman wearing a headset behind me. The humiliation and possible broken foot are far from inspiring but nothing a few lines can’t fix, at least temporarily.
Unfortunately, the bathroom is stuffed with wannabe actresses who somehow wrangled invites to this and are drowning themselves in makeup and perfume to go sit in the dark for ninety minutes, after which they’ll surely have to go through the whole routine again for the after-party. Once the movie starts, I venture back to the bathroom but some security-type woman is lodged there and seems not to be budging. Is she some actress’s female security guard? An employee of the movie theater? An insane stalker who somehow got hold of some security-type uniform? I’m certainly not going to ask her. One thing’s for sure—she’s a buzz killer, in every way.
3
I’m just finishing a “Where Are They Now?” story on Doc from The Love Boat when Chris calls.
“What are you doing?” he asks, and I’m not sure if he means right now or in general.
“Trying to live down my post-wedding shame.” My answer is partially true and partially a complete lie. I haven’t wanted to admit it to anyone, but my mind has been a little fixated on the whole wedding ménage incident, wondering what would have happened had I not freaked out and left. Inappropriate as it was, it did turn me on. It also disgusted me, so though I’m a bit excited that Chris is calling, I had also been pseudo hoping that he would crawl under a rock never to emerge, knowing full well that he lived in L.A. and had my number. It probably would have been smarter to make sure that none of my ménage participants lived in my state, not to mention city, but who considers these things at the time?
“Don’t be silly,” he says. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Just some good, old-fashioned fun.”
“Ha.” I sort of say it and sort of snort it.
“I’ve been wanting to call you for a while,” he says. “But I didn’t want it to be awkward. See, I think you’re really cool, and would love to see you one-on-one but…”
Just then,