October 19
The Present
8:30 P.M.
Did that asshole actually bring a hooker to her birthday party? Already on edge because Harry Kim had yet to text or call back and the stark reality of their financial situation was finally hitting her, Ellie found a new place to vent her rage. As she made the rounds, flitting between guests and introducing old friends to new, conferring with the party planner on when to start dinner service (hold it just another hour, she’d decided), she couldn’t help but keep staring at a certain conspicuous couple. Melvin Ames was a short, bald, mega-successful producer of television shows of dubious entertainment value, a friend of a friend, a quasi-boldfaced name, and a classic LA douchebag whom Ellie had invited because they had bumped into him at the golf club that morning. “I’m having a birthday party tonight!” she’d chirped. “Stop by!” So there he was, in all his lecherous, dwarfish glory. And by his side was a very, very expensive piece of arm candy.
“Is that a fucking hooker?” she hissed, grabbing her husband by the elbow and steering him to look in their direction.
“What? Who? Huh?” said Todd. He squinted at the couple.
Was it her imagination or did Todd have chocolate on his upper lip? She wiped it off with her hand and he wrenched away from her touch, annoyed. “What are you doing?”
“You had a smudge,” she said. “But back to Melvin’s date, she’s a pro, right?”
You’d have to be particularly eagle-eyed to even notice, for the girl was no ordinary call girl. This one was five-ten, Asian, gorgeous, and dressed in tight jeans, thigh-high boots, a Chanel purse slung on her shoulder (real, unlike Mean Celine’s), and a gold Hermes belt wrapped around her twenty-four-inch waist. Why anyone would think she was a hooker rather than a model or an actress, only Ellie could explain. It was the whole package, from the too-tight clothes, too-shiny mane of black hair, and too much makeup, but it was the Hermes belt that really sealed the deal. H for hooker. No self-respecting actress or model ever splurged on designer clothing; they hoarded their money and wore samples from showrooms or cheap castoffs from set.
But hookers? Hookers spent, baby; they wore brand-name logos like merit badges. Blow-job Balenciaga. Anal Armani. Louis Vui-threesome.
“Maybe he’s her sugar daddy,” said Todd, shrugging.
“Which still makes her a whore,” said Ellie, furious. “I want them out of here.”
Todd sighed. “You invited them.”
“Great! I can kick them out.”
“Ellie.”
“A hooker, Todd. The children are here. Sam is here. Have you spoken to her yet, by the way?”
“No, not yet, but I will. I’ll find out what’s going on. I was dealing with the boys and Giggy. The boys broke a speaker and the girls are bullying Giggy again.”
Ellie wasn’t listening. She was staring daggers at the Hollywood producer and his pricey date, willing for them to disappear. What would Vanity Fair think? What would her billionaires think? She hoped no one else would notice, even as she caught the other LA moms glancing over there and casting wary looks the girl’s way. Maybe she was being too judgmental. She knew how hard it was, how rough it was to come from nothing.
But there was a hard line between modeling and dating rich guys and, well, hooking. Besides, the only rich guy she’d ever dated was Archer de Florent, and he married her. There was a huge difference. Ellie had used her looks to claw her way up the social ladder, to secure her business, to build her fortune, but she had never, ever, ever sold her body for any price. She would joke that she sold it only to the highest bidder, but that’s all it was, a joke, and even if she was from the trailer park, she was still horrified and repulsed by the very idea of letting anyone touch you just for cash. She’d made many mistakes in her life, and had been young and stupid once, and she hated seeing the same desperation in other girls. It was too close a reminder of her own past.
Besides, she’d loved Archer after all, and therein lay the difference. Whoever this backdoor Betty was, she was definitely with Melvin for the cold, hard cash.
“Never mind her, who’s that guy over there by the bar?” said Todd. “I don’t think I know who he is. I’ve never seen him before.”
Ellie froze. Was it him? She couldn’t breathe for a moment. But when she looked over to where Todd was motioning, she saw that it wasn’t. There was only a stranger, an older man, slightly out of place, eyes darting furtively around the party.
“No idea,” she said. “Maybe someone’s date?”
“He hasn’t said hello to anyone,” said Todd. “Maybe he crashed?”
“Out here? In Palm Springs?” Ellie scoffed. This was a far cry from the velvet-rope affairs of Hollywood shindigs or New York nightclubs. Their house was in a cul-de-sac, and no one knew about the party except people who had been invited. This wasn’t an event that appeared on publicists’ radars or in media press releases. It was private. Whereas during her youth in Manhattan, it had been almost blood sport to crash exclusive parties, and the most famous crashers even had nicknames like Shaggy and the Sultan, none of that existed in the desert. The strange man had to be someone’s guest, a friend of a friend.
“Maybe he can leave and take the hooker with him,” said Todd, who was uncharacteristically disturbed.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” said Ellie. “Don’t make a scene.”
Todd grunted and left to his mission.
Ellie sighed. Hookers and billionaires. Happy fortieth. She had everything she ever wanted, and then some. Or did she? She wanted to tell Sanjay he was wrong, thirty million wasn’t enough; look at Johnny Depp, who was bankrupt too. Thirty million wasn’t even close to cutting it. She was a huge, yawning pit of desire.
“You have a void in you,” her therapist had said once.
“Oh, I know I do,” she’d said, laughing. “I have a void in me that I fill with jewels and houses and husbands!”
Then she fired her therapist for telling her something so obvious. Of course she had a void in her, and no matter how much she had, she never felt satisfied, never fulfilled, always hungry. More. Archer hadn’t been enough. And Todd—well—to be fully honest, Todd wasn’t even her second husband. He was her third.
But she didn’t count the first one. She’d erased him from her past and scrubbed every bit of him from her memories. She’d been so young! Too young to get married, for sure, which was why it had been easy enough to get it annulled after a few months. There was only Archer, then Todd. Who needed to know about the first guy? He wasn’t important. The past was past. The past was history and so was her first husband.
But as a famous writer once said, the past isn’t dead, it’s not even past, which the presence of Todd’s ex-wife at the party made abundantly clear. “Montserrat!” Ellie said, trying to sound sincere, as her husband’s toxic ex-wife made her way to her.
“Ellie,” she purred. “Happy birthday! Forty. Wow. I wonder what I’ll do when I get to be that age! You’re so brave!” Only Montserrat would equate courage with growing older.
Montserrat never failed to remind Ellie that she was all of five years younger. When Ellie had first married Todd, when they were still cuddly newlyweds, Montserrat would screech “HOW DO YOU LIKE FUCKING THAT OLD CUNT!” on his voice mails. But now the new and improved and medicated Montserrat would be horrified at her former actions. It had been years since she’d tried to run over Ellie with her car or knocked her down and pulled her hair during one of their violent, custody-battle drop-offs and pickups. Now Montserrat was the queen of the subtle knife, the underhanded diss, the undermining, left-handed compliment. In a way, Ellie missed the days when they’d resorted to punching and clawing at each other; at least back then they had been honest about their feelings.
Now they had to air-kiss and make nice.
Annoyingly, the bitch looked good. No wonder Todd had married her. She was a vixen, all bodacious curves in the right places with a flat tummy and tiny bubble butt, sex on a stick. She had almond-shaped dark brown eyes, skin the color of an iced latte, as beautiful as her daughter. Ellie felt a pang. No matter what, this was Sam’s mother.
“How are you, how are the children? How’s Giggy?” Montserrat asked, making a sad face. Montserrat never failed to rub it in that her child was a genius and Ellie’s was a dum-dum.
“Imogen’s great. The twins are great, everyone’s great,” said Ellie brusquely.
“Samantha said Giggy’s moved on to another new tutor,” Montserrat said smugly.
Ellie didn’t take the bait, refused to play that game. She loved both her daughters, even the one who’d come out of this one. “When did you talk to Sam?”
“Oh,” said Montserrat. “Isn’t she here?”
“You know she’s here?”
“Of course. She came to my house first. But I told her I was renovating and she should stay here.” Montserrat had a cottage in La Quinta, which she bought years ago after the divorce came through. Ellie’s victory lap when she bought Gulf House was that much sweeter, knowing that her husband’s ex was stewing in a dinky little nine-hundred-square-foot bungalow while she had this grand, historic estate.
“Why is Sam home?” she asked.
“She didn’t tell you?” asked Montserrat, feigning surprise.
“No.”
Montserrat grimaced, and Ellie could tell she was actually upset this time. “I think she should be the one to tell you.”