“I met his grandmother at a family get-together last night.” That seemed a good lead-in. “She was very friendly. She asked me to have tea with her next week.”
“A boy who respects his grandmother is a good boy.” Ash Black was not a good boy. “Is he Russian?”
“No, his grandmother’s British.” Royalty, at least it seemed to me.
“That’s too bad. What does he do for a living?”
“He’s a musician.”
“Piano?” She assumed he was a classical performer.
“He’s ah…He’s a vocalist. And a string instrumentalist.” Translation: leather-pants-wearing, shirtless, tattooed rock god. This was complicated. I wanted my parents to like him enough to not panic, but not like him enough to start working on the wedding invitations. Russian Orthodox to the hilt, my mother had a full set of little religious icons arranged in my honor, praying for love and fertility, in that order of course. How was she going to react in two weeks when we got engaged? And then two weeks after that when I broke it all off? I supposed I could take a chance and not tell her any of it, but with all the gossip magazines she was bound to see something. Ash Black news wasn’t just on a few online fan sites. Ash Black news made People magazine headlines. My mother shopped at the grocery store, she went to the dentist. She’d see People magazine.
I put it on the list of things I’d manage when I had to. I’d just have to find a way of not yanking my parents around too hard on this roller coaster ride I’d signed up for. It was only one month, after all, and it wasn’t as if they’d ever meet him.
I somehow made it through the rest of the conversation without giving her a heart attack, but it took a lot of evasion and half-truths. I had to tell her I was leaving town for a few days and it made her apoplectic, as anticipated, missing all that time from work and staying at a hotel with a strange man though of course in separate rooms I promised her. Would we be in separate rooms? There was so much of this that I had no idea how it would play out. Last night I’d been a little surprised when he’d packed me safely into a limo and sent me on my way. But I should have been relieved that he was keeping his word, honoring the terms of our agreement. But also pulling me into dark hallways and giving me intense orgasms. I was confused already and we’d only just begun.
§
“Smoky embers.” A girl who couldn’t have been much older than 19 applied eye shadow to my lids while another stylist gave me a blowout with a round brush and a diffusion hairdryer.
“Are you sure about the Hyacinth shimmer?”
“You think matte?”
“I mean, if you’re going with glisten on her cheeks.”
It felt impolite to just sit there, making no conversation, while these two ladies styled me into L.A. perfection, but I had no idea how to enter into the flow when they were speaking another language. They didn’t seem too interested in chatting with me, anyway. They’d bustled into my hotel room with boxes and bags of tools and products, unceremoniously telling me to strip down so they could begin their work.
I’d arrived two hours earlier, a car taking me from LAX to the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood. I’d never been to California before, and the palm trees and bright sunlight in December looked gorgeous but disorienting. Checking in, I thought I saw Steven Tyler from Aerosmith, a big feather wound into his long hair poking out from underneath a wide-brimmed white hat. But he’d been heading out of the lobby while I’d been heading in, and I guessed if I was about to start hanging out around celebrities it wouldn’t do to ask every one of them for their autograph.
Ash was picking me up at seven thirty. I knew because Lola had texted me. In my past experience, getting picked up by a guy to take me out to dinner meant he’d pull up in a Honda Civic and hastily brush off some old fast food wrappers from the passenger seat so I had somewhere to sit. I figured it might be different this night with Ash.
The stylist put me in a glittery black top, sleeveless, held up by a mere string around my neck. My skirt was short, black and streamlined, and my heels were about a foot high. Nearly naked in the middle of winter, before I headed out I reached for my New York coat.
“No!” the stylists screamed in horrified unison. Walking out through the glossy, open-aired lobby into the balmy evening air, I realized they were right. No snow, no sleet, no rain, I was in L.A., baby.
A driver hopped out of a limo as I emerged onto the street, welcoming me into the back of the car. No fast food wrappers there. My heart in my throat, I stepped in. I hadn’t seen Ash since Saturday night, the night he’d sung Sinatra and introduced me to his grandmother and pressed me up against a wall, talking dirty and making me love it.
“Welcome to L.A., Ana.” Lola, the PR queen, sat there in a red silk shirt and skin-tight jeans. We had company. Ash sat next to the window looking slightly uncomfortable and dressed all in black.
“Hey.” I settled in the empty seat next to Lola. She tossed a magazine into my lap. Ash and I were on the cover.
“I’m pissed about the corner,” Lola complained.
“Nobody puts Baby in the corner,” Ash murmured. As a Dirty Dancing fan, I had to appreciate the reference.
“I mean, how many times can we hear shocking news about Charlie Sheen?” Front and center, the latest issue of Us Weekly featured Charlie Sheen in black sunglasses looking haggard and exhausted. Up in the right corner, Ash and I stood beaming together at the Waldorf Astoria.
I turned to page 32, feeling like I had to be making all of this up. “Just Like How Matt Damon met Lucy!” read the headline, describing how Ash had met me ducking into the library where I was working to avoid the paparazzi. They had all kinds of quotes from me, too, about how amazing Ash was and how it was love at first sight. I’d never said any of it. I was right. It was all made up.
Hustled out of the car at a restaurant, Ash put his hand around my waist as our picture was taken again and again. I didn’t know if Lola had arranged this or if the restaurant was star-studded enough it got regularly staked out. Smiling, taking our time, we let them get us from all angles, then headed in to our pole-position table right at the window. No sooner had Ash smiled at me and started to ask a question when someone interrupted, asking if it was OK to take a selfie with him.
Then, before I had a chance to even glance at the menu, his agent Joel came over.
“Here’s the It Girl!” He kissed me on both cheeks. “Get up and give me a twirl.”
I glanced quickly at Ash. Was this man joking? He wanted me to spin around so he could take a good look at me? Ash didn’t meet my eyes. He looked like he’d just taken a sip of something he found distasteful. I stood and turned around quickly, Joel taking in my figure as if appraising a new toy he’d purchased.
Ash ordered for us as Joel kept on talking, and then someone else joined us as soon as he left. A boney, bitchy woman strutted by, her hips jutting out, her eyes shooting daggers at me. She leaned down to Ash and talked exclusively to him for a little while. I thought I saw a Kardashian over by the bar and an actor whose name I couldn’t remember, but I’d definitely watched him shoot a lot of zombies in The Walking Dead. Every single person in the place was over-the-top gorgeous, from the wait staff to the bartender to each and every patron. Ash fit right in.
As soon as it had begun, it was over, with Ash holding my hand and playing the part of adoring boyfriend. But after I climbed into the limo, he pulled away with a brief, “See you tomorrow.” Then he shut the door and the driver took me back to my hotel, alone.
I told myself the good news was that the next month should be really easy. I was li
ke a puppet. All I needed to do was let them style me, smile pretty, and they’d take care of everything else. The next day as I walked around, I kept telling myself how lucky I was. I took a taxi down to Venice Beach, people-watching and poking around in smoothie bars and t-shirt shops. I told myself that this was a great development! Now I didn’t have to worry about things getting messy.
That night, the makeup artist and stylist arrived again and painted me and teased me and dressed me up in true ‘I’m with the band’ fashion. All in black with long boots and a short dress, my hair was big and my lingerie tiny. A limo took me straight to an unmarked, back door entrance. A roadie led me down hallways underneath the Nokia Center, tapped twice then let me in to see the band.
The first thing I saw were breasts. Big ones, naked, with a man’s head between them. My step forward froze, like someone had pressed pause on a remote. The man had reddish hair so it wasn’t Ash, but, still, I’d clearly stepped into the wrong room.
“Hey.” A guy who looked vaguely familiar gave me a heavy-lidded nod. He had a girl on his lap, too, though she wore some clothes. Not much.
“Ana!” Ash stood up. He’d been over in the corner strumming his guitar. Chillaxing. With his bandmates and the boobs and the coke, I realized as the red-headed man stood up with a loud sniff, gave his head a quick shake and wiped his nostrils with the back of his hand. He’d been snorting coke off of her naked breasts.
“I didn’t realize they were bringing you down here.” Ash ran his hand through his hair looking somewhat unsettled by my arrival.
“I can go.” I rewound my steps, taking myself back toward the door. Angry little eyes followed me, from two gorgeous women who’d been sitting on either side of Ash. They willed me away with their evil groupie mojo.
“Hey! Is it the librarian?” The red-haired coke-snorting guy strode toward me, quick and full of purpose and enthusiasm. Now I recognized him, the bass player for The Blacklist. “She’s hot!” he declared to Ash as if I weren’t there.