Friends plus chaperone, Anna thought. She tried not to stare at Marshall, who was using his chopsticks to pick apart the white rice on his plate, seemingly grain by grain.
“There's no nutrition in white rice,” he scowled. “A person might as well down cyanide.”
“Marshall? Maybe you'd like to sit at the sake bar?” Sam suggested cheerfully. “Far from the evil ivory rice?”
Marshall shook his head. “No. I have to be with Dee.”
Dee rolled her eyes. “Sam? Did you hear anything about my
actual prom date
?”
Sam shrugged. “Nothing from Cammie, but she's supposed to meet us at my house in about an—
“Hey, Dee!”
With movie-perfect timing, Cammie swung into the restaurant unannounced, clad in a flouncy tiered Crazy Chic orange gauze skirt and a pink-and-orange bandeau top. “I've got news. Too good to hold until later.”
Dee jumped up and hugged her, then introduced Marshall. Since there were no free chairs, Cammie slid onto Marshall's lap. He stiffened up; she glanced down.
“Is that a chopstick in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?” she teased.
Sam and Dee laughed; Anna tried not to show too much bemusement at Cammie's crack. As for Marshall, he blushed beet red and scooched out from under Cammie.
“My date?” Dee prompted. “Or else—”
“Done deal,” Cammie announced, plucking a seaweed wrapped Pacific albacore roll from the platter. “His name is Jack Walker. Friend of Ben's from Princeton. Very punk-bad-boy hot.”
Anna stopped with her chopsticks dangling in mid-air.
Jack Walker? The same Jack Walker who had hit on Maddy? Had to be. She couldn't imagine Dee going out with such a player; she had to still be emotionally fragile.
On the other hand, Dee looked
so
hopeful.
“I know him, Dee. He's cute,” Anna assured her, hoping she was doing the right thing.
Marshall cleared his throat, which made his Adam's apple bob like a bobble-head doll in his throat. “Um, excuse me. Dee's pass specifically says that I'm escorting her. I've got it in the glove box in the car. I'll go get it to show you.”
Cammie draped an arm casually around Gangly Guy's shoulder. “There's no need for that. You are escorting her, Marshall. So is Jack. Consider it … a variation on a double date.”
The intern nodded solemnly. “I suppose that's all right, but I can't allow any alone time that could be an opportunity for illegal drug or alcohol activity or sexual relations that would not be conducive to the therapeutic process.”
Cammie stroked Marshall's hair. “Marsh, honey, can you excuse us? We've got some girl talk to do.”
“Sure,” he agreed, apparently satisfied now that he knew he'd be with Dee at prom. “I'll go to the sushi bar and watch the fish swim around before they're murdered.”
As Anna watched him depart, she didn't notice the teen girl with long, thick dark hair who was approaching their table from the opposite direction.
“Hi, Anna. Wow. Am I interrupting?”
To Anna's surprise, there stood Maddy. She wore oversize khaki pants and a navy T-shirt large enough to house a small island nation. Her hair was roped in a long, frizzy braid; she carried what looked like an overnight bag.
“No, of course not,” Anna told her. “What are you doing here?”
Maddy looked embarrassed. “Can I talk to you for a second? In private?”
Anna nodded, excused herself, and led Maddy to a short corridor by the rear restrooms.
“Are you, like, pissed?” Maddy asked as they found a quiet spot. “I would have called your cell but I forgot to ask Ben for your number and he wasn't home but I remember he said that you were having lunch here. I could have called the restaurant and asked them to page you, but I didn't think of it until I got here.”
“It's okay. You did the best you could. So what can I do for you?” Anna asked. She still couldn't figure out what was such a big emergency.
“The thing is …” Maddy hesitated. “Okay. I should just say it. Okay, I'll say it. My mom sent me a prom dress. I don't have a lot of money to go buy a new dress at the Beverly Center or anything like that. None of my old clothes fit. I wanted to show you the dress so you could maybe tell me if it's okay.”
Anna was touched and a little ashamed that she'd ever been jealous of this girl. She was so … young. Innocent.
“I'd be happy to look at your dress,” she declared.
“Gosh! Thanks!”
Maddy opened her overnight bag and extracted the dress. It was hot pink polyester, with rows of ruffles from the neckline to just under the bust, and little cap ruffled sleeves. Plain and tentlike, it fell straight to the floor.
All in all, it was perhaps the most hideous garment Anna had ever seen.
“What do you think?”
“I think you should put it back in the bag,” Anna told her, in as neutral a voice as she could manage.
“You don't like it,” Maddy declared. “I knew it sucked.”
“You can do better.” Anna was formulating an idea as she spoke. “Listen … would you like to come sit for a while with me and my friends?”
Maddy's face lit up. “Really? If it's not an imposition … that would be great!”
Anna linked her arm through Maddy's and led her through the crowded restaurant and back to the table, signaling the hostess—an Eva Longoria look-alike (which had to piss her off, because that meant she wouldn't get any roles unless someone was casting look-alikes)—to add another chair to the end of the booth.
As Maddy sat down, Cammie gave the girl the once-over. “Who are you?”
“A friend of Anna's. Madeleine McGee. You can call me Maddy. Everyone does.”
Cammie eyed Maddy's oversize T-shirt. “Whoever you are, were you wearing that T-shirt before you gave birth?”
Anna cringed. She should have expected Cammie to make such an obnoxious and rude remark, but it was such a mean thing to say.
Maddy's reaction, though, was completely disarming. Instead of getting mad, she grinned broadly. “I used to be really fat and I haven't bought new clothes yet because I'm going to lose even more weight. Plus I don't have all that much money, to tell you the truth.” Without further prompting, she launched into the story of her stomach stapling, leaving no stitch untouched, even digging into her pocketbook for her well-worn “before” picture to illustrate.
As the photograph was making the rounds, Sam snapped her fingers. “I know who you are. You're the chick living at Ben's house.”
“That's right!” Maddy exclaimed, almost jumping out of her chair that the great Sam Sharpe had heard of her. Thus prompted, the story of how she'd come to move into the Birnbaums' house tumbled out, followed by a rhapsody about Ben himself and how it was so wonderful of Ben to take her to the Pacific Palisades junior prom that same evening.
With this last disclosure, every eye at the table swung to Anna.
Oops.
“Well, that's true,” Anna allowed, doing rapid damage control. “I
suggested
that Ben be her escort, then come over to our senior prom. I mean, you only have one junior prom, right?”
“Cool!” Cammie cried gleefully. “That is so Esalen Institute—my aunt did Esalen years ago before she became a Scientologist. You two are
sharing
Ben.”
“Well, why not? You don't have him anymore.” Dee touched Maddy's forearm. “Cammie and Ben used to be an item.”
“Wow! Before he fell madly in love with Anna?”
“What do you think?” Cammie jibed.
“Maddy, are you at all hungry?” Anna jumped in, wanting to change the subject so Maddy wouldn't become the object of Cammie's pique. She'd been in that position herself; it wasn't much fun. “Why don't we order another—?”
Maddy shook her head. “I can't eat much because my stomach is smaller, remember? I'm always hungry but I can never eat; that's just the way it is. It's worth it, though, 'cause I look at you guys and you're all so, like, thin and perfect. It makes me feel like I'm still a moose.”
Cammie eyed the garment bag. “What's in there?”
Lie
. Anna wished that telepathy were not just a figment of science-fiction imagination.
Maddy told the truth. “Umm, it's my prom dress. My mom sent it.”
“Show it to me,” Cammie ordered, in a voice that brooked no opposition.
Slowly, Maddy took the horrid garment from its carrying case, mumbling again how she hadn't picked it out, how her mother had sent it to her from Michigan. As the dress came out of its bag, the table fell deathly silent. Even Cammie couldn't seem to grasp that someone's own
mother
had suggested that her daughter wear such a frock.
“Does your mother
hate
you?” Cammie ventured, in a voice that sounded more shocked than mean.
“I know. It's ugly.” Maddy looked crushed as she wadded the dress up and stuffed it back into the bag.
“Please. It's beyond ugly,” Cammie snorted. “It's like, post ugly. It should be shredded and burned before it breeds and multiplies.”
“You need a different dress,” Dee agreed, squinting at Maddy. “If you don't mind my asking, what size are you now? It's hard to tell because your clothes are so baggy.”
“Twelve, maybe? Fourteen? I haven't really shopped much.”
This is the moment,
Anna thought.
“Sam? You know, that stylist is coming over later. … Maybe we can call and see if she could bring Maddy a different dress.”
Maddy smiled wanly. “I'd love that, Anna, but I can only afford about maybe … fifty dollars?”
Cammie was aghast. “For what, a lipstick?”
Anna looked pointedly at Sam; Sam picked up on the glance immediately. “Know what, everyone? I have an idea: definitive makeover for this girl. Makeup, hair, nails. And for God's sake, a new gown. On us. What do you say?”
Dee nodded. “Great idea. I'm feeling it.”
Anna took in Maddy's uncertain face. “You deserve it, Maddy. You've
earned
it. Let us do this for you.”
She meant every word. For a while there, insecurity about Ben had stupidly gotten in the way of her usual belief in the power of kindness. She was not going to let that happen again. Every once in a while, a situation came along where she could use the advantages life had given her to make someone else's life a bit better. This was definitely one of those situations.
Maddy gulped hard. “Wow. You must be the four nicest girls on the whole planet.”
“Not exactly,” Dee observed. “One of us is
too
nice, two of us are rarely nice, and one of us—that would be me—has neuropsychological issues.”
This truth went over Maddy's head completely. “But what about appointments for hair and stuff?” she asked. “My prom is
tonight
.”
Sam dug her BlackBerry cell phone out of her limited-edition gold Fendi spy bag and pressed Kiki's speed dial. “If you're rich enough and famous enough, you don't need an appointment. Maddy McGee, welcome to the City of Angels.”
“I
t's good to be the queen,” Sam remarked with exaggerated hauteur, as she watched Suki, an expert in the patented Japanese thermal reconditioning hair process called the Yuko System, go to town on Maddy. The Yuko System would transform her long frizzy mess into glossy, pin-straight, perfect hair. That is, until the new frizz began to grow in; then the process would have to be redone. The Yuko System was five hundred dollars a pop, exclusive of washing, styling, and blow dry.
No one ever said beauty came cheap.
It was an hour and a half since they'd left the sushi restaurant, and the girls were gathered in Sam's twelve-hundred-square-foot bedroom suite; Maddy sat before a dresser mirror on a hard-back chair that Roger, the butler, had brought up from the den and positioned on top of an artist's dropcloth. Suki had cheerfully explained during the early part of Maddy's process that she'd been born at Encino-Tarzana Medical Center and been christened Krissy Atkinson. Once she'd embraced Japanese thermal reconditioning as her professional calling—eschewing a gig at the Supercuts in Sherman Oaks—Krissy/Suki had given herself an appropriate Japanese-sounding name. She claimed it had increased her business by a factor of five.
While Maddy was being reconditioned, Sam lolled on her California king bed with the clean, silver-poled, roofless canopy. Her notion had been, since time was of the essence, to bring the mountain to Maddy—hair, makeup artist, etc. In a matter of a couple of hours, the makeover project had turned her room into prom central for all of them.
Across the room from Maddy, Cammie was sitting at a nail tech's portable table. Meanwhile, Dee was in the bathroom, getting a seaweed wrap from Katarina from Spa 310. Her escort, Marshall, had been content to wait downstairs in Jackson's library, though Sam had graciously offered him a thermal reconditioning process too.
All this activity meant that Sam and Anna would start with the personal attention of Gillian Garrett, a professional shopper and stylist on retainer for two of the major movie studios. It would be Gillian's job to help them peruse the various prom dresses she'd brought over in a panel truck—they currently hung on the costume rack in Sam's five-hundred-square-foot closet.
Tall, thin, heavily tattooed, and multiply pierced, raven-haired Gillian was known for her own quirky couture, such as creating dresses from shower curtains, glitter, and a glue gun. Where she really shone, though, was shopping for others. Based on a quick description of the client and his or her tastes, she had a sixth sense for the styles and designers that would be a perfect match.
“Remember when we got dressed here for your dad's wedding, Sam?” Dee called through the open stained-mahogany bathroom door. “I found that great gown for you but you didn't want to wear it because it was size …” Her voice trailed off. “Never mind. Your dress size is not important. Real beauty comes from within.”
“Quoth the size nothing,” Sam quipped, drawing her legs up and crossing them. “Okay, Gillian, show us what you got. Start with her.” She hitched her thumb toward Anna, who sat on a pale pink leather desk chair.
Gillian checked her notes. “You're the … five-foot-eight size four who likes clean lines and classics. Right?”
“Yes, exactly.”