12:41 P.M., PST
“Anna?”
Parker Pinelli was heading down the board-walk toward her. “Hey. I thought I saw you. How’s it going?”
Once again Anna noted Parker’s resemblance to James Dean, circa East of Eden. She’d first rented this movie on Cynthia’s insistence, having read the John Steinbeck novel on her own when she was in ninth grade. Something about the painful parent-child relationships in it—the grown child whose ceaseless efforts to win the parents’ love bear no fruit—made her think of her sister, Susan. Again.
“Parker Pinelli. From the wedding?”
“Right, I remember. Hi.”
“So, you hitched a ride with my brother, huh?”
“Sorry?”
“Monty? He told me he picked you up. He’s my brother.”
“Right, he said that. Sorry, I’m not firing on all cylinders yet.”
“No prob,” Parker said good-naturedly. “Pretty wild last night, huh? You missed a great night at Sam’s—we split from that Warners thing and went to her house. You and Ben should have hung out. So, what’d you guys do?”
Anna’s stomach gurgled. She was beginning to feel kind of queasy. She couldn’t tell if it was from exhaustion, the phone call with her sister, or the mention of Ben’s name. Probably all of the above, she concluded.
“Oh, you know,” she said vaguely, wanting to change the subject. “Aren’t you supposed to be feeding the homeless for school credit?”
“Nah, I just came to hang with my friends. I finished my community service weeks ago. I volunteer at the Actors Home. There are all these old movie stars there, you know, like from the thirties and forties? They tell these amazing Hollywood stories. It’s great.”
Anna was touched. “It’s nice you do that.”
“Hey, you gotta find connections where you can.” He raised his face to the sun. “It’s nice out, huh? We used to live in Chicago. The weather there sucked. So, want to take a walk?”
Why not? Anna had no particular desire to join the others. They began to stroll in the opposite direction, past incense stands, henna artists, and blankets covered with bad paintings for sale. Silver jewelry stands gave way to a young man selling a hand-size airplane that followed his verbal commands. There was a crowd around a guy in shorts who kept up comic banter while balancing a girl in a chair on his chin. Farther down, a street performer blew fire at an impressed crowd, who dropped coins and bills in the top hat in front of him.
“It’s wild down here, huh?” Parker asked.
“I kind of like it,” Anna said. “I could see living down here.”
“Careful,” Parker teased, “they’ll take away your membership at the Beverly Hills Country Club for saying something like that.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not all that crazy about Beverly Hills.”
“Come on,” Parker chided. “Everyone wants to live in Beverly Hills.”
They passed a stand that boasted “the largest selection of sunglasses on the planet,” and, beyond that, a woman with graying hair down to her knees who gave neck and back massages. Her sign promised twenty minutes of heaven for twenty dollars.
“Hey, Monkey Man!” Parker called, waving to an elderly man with a small monkey perched on his shoulder.
“How ya doin’, Parker?” the man called back.
“Come on, I’ll introduce you,” Parker said, and they hustled over. “We were both extras in a film together last year. This guy’s the best.”
“Parker, Lulu’s been askin’ aboutcha,” Monkey Man said, flashing a nearly toothless smile.
“Aw, Lulu, I missed you, too,” Parker said, giving the monkey a kiss. She screeched happily, hopping around on Monkey Man’s shoulder, and kissed Parker back. He introduced Anna to Monkey Man.
“Lulu’s got a crush on your boyfriend,” he told Anna.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Anna said, laughing as Lulu jumped into Parker’s arms and covered him with monkey kisses. “But if he were, I’d be proud to lose him to a girl like Lulu.”
Monkey Man pointed a long finger at Anna. “I like this girl.”
When Lulu finally allowed herself to be torn from Parker’s arms, he and Anna headed farther down the board-walk. Two boys walked by eating chili dogs, and the scent wafted over to Anna. Her stomach turned. Maybe she was getting sick.
“Parker, would you mind if we headed back?”
“No prob.” He peered at her. “Are you okay? You got kind of pale all of a sudden.”
“Probably just my New York pallor,” Anna joked, but she was suddenly freezing. They turned back and Anna rubbed her arms to warm up.
Parker slipped off his leather jacket. “Here, wear this.”
“No, that’s okay—”
But he’d already settled his jacket around Anna’s shoulders, a gesture that reminded her of Ben. Why did every damn thing remind her of Ben?
“You and Ben partied a little too hard last night, huh?” Parker guessed, almost as if he were reading her mind. She made a deliberate decision to banish Ben from her thoughts. Ben Birnbaum is nothing to me, she told herself. Less than nothing.
“So, you’re an actor, right?” Anna coaxed, just to fill her mind with something other than Him.
“Yeah, I’m up for a guest-starring role for this mid-season replacement. My agent says it’s down to me and one other guy.”
“When will you hear?”
“He said something about after the Jewish holiday.”
Anna tried to think what Jewish holiday he could possibly be talking about. Hanukkah ended before Christmas; that much she knew. Passover wasn’t until the spring. Nothing else came to mind.
Anna’s stomach gurgled again. Even with Parker’s leather jacket on, she was shivering. “You really don’t look so hot,” Parker told her.
“I’m okay,” Anna insisted, though she wasn’t certain it was true. But she wasn’t about to make a scene just because she was cold and her stomach was a little upset.
Parker slowed down and scratched the perfect cleft in his chin. “Listen, Anna, before we get back with the others, there’s something I wanted to say to you.”
“What?”
“I hope you don’t think this is out of line. I mean, I know you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but you seem like a really cool girl.”
“Whatever you want to say, just say it,” Anna told him.
“Yeah. Well, it’s about Birnbaum,” Parker said. “You just met the guy, right?”
“Right.”
“He comes on like he’s all that. But there are some things you don’t know about him that you probably sh—”
“Hey, you two, come help!” Sam called to them.
The line was even longer than it had been before. Parker held up a finger, as in “one minute.”
“Go on,” Anna urged him, her voice low. “What about Ben?”
“Yo, big bro, throw out some of this trash for us,” Monty asked, waving a giant plastic trash bag in Parker’s direction.
“Be right there.”
Anna reached for Parker’s arm. “Parker …”
“We can talk later,” Parker said.
Anna told herself to drop it. Hearing more about Ben, good or bad, was like aluminum foil pressing on a dental filling. But she couldn’t help herself. “You’ll tell me later?”
Parker mumbled something unintelligible, then scratched behind one ear and ambled over to the table to grab the garbage bag from his brother. As far as Anna was concerned, his refusal to make eye contract with her was the body language of a man who was having second thoughts.