Amen, L.A. Read online

“We’re landing!” she shrieked with excitement.

  I rubbed my sleepy eyes and then gazed out the window. Thanks to Google Earth, I had an idea of what Los Angeles looks like from five thousand feet, but a computer screen can’t give you the scale. It’s huge. A hundreds-of-square-miles sprawl of buildings, houses, and freeways, stretching from the San Bernardino Mountains to the ocean. I got a bird’s-eye view of the two big freeways, the 101 and the 405, which I would come to know and loathe well. It was just a little after noon—we’d dropped two time zones on the flight—but both freeways were stop and go. Mostly stop.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” Gemma squealed. “California. Thank you, Mom. Thank you!”

  Fifteen minutes later, we were on the ground. I retrieved my guitar from the overhead compartment—it’s a beauty, an acoustic Takamine that was an operative result of several hundred hours of babysitting—and slung a small backpack over my other shoulder, and after heartfelt hugs from the poodle ladies, I was good to go. Since it had been eighty degrees in the Twin Cities when we’d taken off, and it was the same temperature here in Burbank, I was traveling comfortably in a battered pair of no-name jeans, a Mankato State University T-shirt, and flip-flops.

  The Burbank airport is mercifully small. We’d heard nightmare stories about the big Los Angeles airport, LAX. My dad made a bathroom pit stop and said he wanted to call my mom, so my brother, my sister, and I beat him to baggage claim. It wasn’t hard to find the guy from the church who was picking us up. First, he had a hand-lettered sign: WELCOME TO L.A. SHELTON FAMILY. Second, he was the best-looking guy in a room crowded with good-looking people. Easily six foot two, with close-cropped and well-gelled dark hair, he had a cleft chin, broad cheekbones, and blue eyes the color of a clear May sky. He was dressed in hip-casual jeans, a white T-shirt, and a black silk sport coat.

  “Whoa!” Gemma whispered. “He’s hot!” She did the hair-flip thing she does whenever she approaches a cute boy. This guy, however, was not a cute boy. He had to be in his early twenties, at least. I knew the age difference wouldn’t bother Gemma a bit.

  I waved to the fine guy and he strode over to us with a hand outstretched. “Shelton family! Welcome to Los Angeles. I’m Xan, the church van driver.”

  “I’m Gemma,” my sister purred through her frosty pink lip gloss. “It’s fantastic to meet you.” She held her hand out to him. He took it to shake but she just held on.

  Ever so subtly, I kicked her in the shin. She dropped his hand. “I’m Nat.” I shook his hand. “And this is our brother, Chad.”

  “It’s great to finally meet you guys,” Xan said. “Your mom can’t wait to see you.” He looked around. “Where’s your dad?”

  “Pit stop,” I explained. “He drank a little too much on the plane. Coffee, that is. Because he doesn’t drink much. Alcohol.”

  I winced, because I knew I sounded like an idiot. I’d always prided myself on not being intimidated by good-looking guys. It wasn’t like their looks were something they had earned; they were merely the luck of the genetic lottery. Back in Mankato, Sean was considered a fine guy. But that was Mankato-hot, as opposed to L.A. hot. I looked around baggage claim. There were easily a half dozen guys who would zip past Sean on the Heatometer.

  “Oh my gosh!” Gemma gasped, staring past me at something.

  “Holy shlitz!” Chad added. That was his latest attempt to cuss without actually cussing.

  I turned to see the object of their attention. It was Katherine Heigl herself, in black skinny jeans and a couple of layered tank tops, with big sunglasses perched high on her head.

  One look at her in person made me realize that the comparison once made between us was almost ridiculously misguided. She was thin. Demoralizingly thin, because I had thought she was one of the few hot young actresses in Hollywood who didn’t look like she was a size nothing. But she couldn’t have been more than a size four. I felt positively porky. I remembered something I’d read about the camera putting twenty pounds on a person. I felt like Katherine Heigl had just put twenty pounds on me.

  Chad’s eyes followed longingly as a uniformed flunky arrived to whisk her away. Just then, Dad stepped into the baggage claim area. He broke into a big smile when he saw us with Xan, then trotted over and introduced himself with his usual warmth.

  “Do you have any baggage that’s coming through?” Xan asked.

  My dad shook his head. “All we’ve got is this carry-on stuff; we shipped everything else.” He turned to us. “I couldn’t call your mom.”

  Chad grinned. “Didn’t juice your cell?” My father was famous for not turning things off or on: the stove, his cell, the car engine, the water after he brushed his teeth. Some might find it annoying. Fortunately, my mother finds it quirky. She’s forgiving that way. But maybe not of her virgin eldest daughter no longer being a virgin.

  Geez. Why couldn’t I get that out of my head?

  I reached into my purse for my cell. “Use my phone, Dad.”

  “Or we could just surprise her,” Chad suggested.

  Dad grinned. “That’s a great idea.”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” Xan promised as he led us toward the exit. “You’re going to love your new house.”

  “Definitely,” Gemma agreed, because Mom had uploaded dozens of photographs. In Mankato, we had a smallish three-bedroom low-slung ranch on a bluff not far from the Blue Earth River. Here the parish home was two stories and half again as big, located on the residential portion of Rodeo Drive north of Santa Monica Boulevard. Gemma would have an actual Rodeo Drive address, and for the first time, she and I would have our own rooms.

  “Great. You know Ricardo Montalban used to own it?” Xan asked.

  “I didn’t, no.” My father stroked his chin. “Well, I guess it’s not so strange. There are a lot of actors here.”

  “Who’s Ricardo Montalban?” Chad wondered aloud.

  Dad grinned. “A big star from before you were born. You’re making me feel old.”

  “You are old,” Chad pointed out.

  We reached the parking structure and then our vehicle, which I expected would be a church van like the one at home. Not. It was a stretch limousine, the kind you see depositing celebrities on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. Discreetly lettered below the blackout glass on the forward passenger door was THE CHURCH OF BEVERLY HILLS. BEVERLY HILLS, CA.

  Xan held the door, and Gemma slid into the car as if she’d been doing this sort of thing her entire life, careful to put every inch of her miniskirt-clad legs on display for him. Chad and I clambered in after her.

  “The fridge is stocked, and you can use the TV or the CD player,” Xan said.

  Gemma looked upward. “If this is a dream, please, God, don’t let me wake up.”

  Dad opened the front passenger door and sat next to Xan.

  “You don’t have to be up here, Mr. Shelton!” Xan exclaimed. “The limo seats twelve.”

  “Hey, I’d rather be up here,” Dad assured him.

  “Suit yourself, sir.” Xan started the car. “Sorry for the walk, but the line at valet parking was insane and I was afraid I’d be late.”

  Dad ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. “We’re not really valet kind of people.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Gemma mumbled.

  As we pulled away, I looked out the window at the other cars. Mercedes. BMW. Mercedes. Lexus. Range Rover. Hummer. BMW. BMW. BMW. No wonder American automakers were in such trouble.

  As Xan drove, he chatted with my dad. Dad has a gift of being able to talk easily to anybody about pretty much anything. He always says he gets his best material from conversations with new people. I listened in. Xan had come to Los Angeles to be an actor—if he couldn’t be an actor, he’d be happy to model—and he lived in the guesthouse of a very famous television producer who was a prominent member of our new church.

  Chad opened the fridge, took out a raspberry Arizona iced tea, and put on his iPod—undoubtedly set to Children of Bodom or some o
ther death metal band that he loved. Gemma and I got Fiji water, and then Gemma blasted Pussycat Dolls through the excellent sound system. The Dolls are not, in my opinion, actual music, but I was too busy taking in the scenery to argue with her.

  The ride to our new home took us through the heart of Hollywood, and I stared out the smoked glass at the denizens of Sunset and Vine preening for the afternoon. On one corner was a person—man or woman indeterminate—dressed as an alien, holding a picket sign that read THE END IS COMING. Directly behind him was a severely overweight woman of a certain age in an ill-advised string bikini, carrying a sign of her own. It pointed at her ass: THE END.

  Gemma was peering out the window, too, at the tourist hustle and bustle, homeless people in rags, and garish neon signs for everything from wax museums to tattoo parlors. “This is Hollywood?” she asked rhetorically, sounding like a little kid who had just learned that there was no Santa.

  When we stopped at a light, strange people tried to look inside our limo to see what famous person was being chauffeured around. This perked Gemma up considerably. Me? I stared glumly at the unfamiliar landscape. Taco shops next to porn shops next to boutiques. We continued west, through an Asian neighborhood. Then a Russian one. Then a gay one, with the most gorgeous guys walking around who would have no interest in either me or Katherine Heigl.

  Before I knew it, we were in Beverly Hills. Xan turned onto Rodeo Drive at Wilshire Boulevard, and I was confronted by the designer stores that lined both sides of the street. Gucci. Valentino. Chanel. A single item from one of these stores might cost the entire year’s take-home pay of the average person in Mankato.

  “Just a couple of minutes now,” Xan told us.

  “Sam!” Chad exclaimed—his non-cussing version of “damn”—as he stared out at a gorgeous girl in a red Ferrari passing us.

  We crossed Santa Monica Boulevard, and Rodeo Drive turned residential, lined by palm trees taller than any building in Mankato. Many houses had gates and hedges to protect the occupants from gawkers, tour buses, and Google Earth Street View. Our house at 427 didn’t have a gate. I was glad for that. But I still felt my heart pound as we approached it on the left. 413. 419. 425. 427.

  Xan drove right past it.

  “You missed our house,” Dad pointed out.

  Xan looked puzzled, pulled over to the right, and stopped the limo. “No I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, you did,” Dad said. “It’s 427 North Rodeo Drive. Back up, please.”

  “You don’t live—”

  “Back up, please.” My dad cut him off, with good reason. Whether I wanted to live here or not, 427 North Rodeo Drive was our new address.

  “Okay.” Xan shrugged and put the limo in reverse. He backed up and then pulled into the driveway of the house at 427 North Rodeo Drive.

  Weird. There was no moving van. Neither of the two cars the movers had brought from Minnesota—our 2002 Subaru Forester and our 2000 Saturn SL2, which I now realized were terribly downscale for Los Angeles—was parked in the driveway. There was nothing in the driveway, in fact, but a single bright yellow Gold Star Pest Control van and two workmen spreading gold tarpaulins on the front lawn.

  Chad took out his earbuds. “What’s up with this?”

  Dad looked mystified. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  Xan looked confused. “Mr. Shelton? I asked you if you knew about the Montalban house—”

  “Right. This house,” Dad said.

  Xan rubbed the deep cleft in his chin. “No. Not this house. This is the parish house. Not the Montalban house. You didn’t talk to your wife before you took off?”

  “Why? It would have been five in the morning here,” I pointed out.

  “Ah. Right,” Xan said. “A little misunderstanding. Let me take you to where you’re actually living.”

  My father looked at me. “Nat? Call your mother.”

  I did. But by the time I reached her—she didn’t answer, so I sent her a text and it took a few minutes for her to ring back—Xan had driven us up into the neighborhood above the Beverly Hills Hotel. In fact, when my cell rang, he’d just stopped at a white wrought-iron gate to enter an access code.

  “Mom? We’re here.” The gate swung open, and we started up a long secluded driveway.

  “You’re here?” she exclaimed. “I’m not. I’m at the hardware store, but heading home. I can’t wait to see you guys. Why didn’t you call when you—”

  The call dropped, which wasn’t such a bad thing, because I was too busy staring at the structure now coming into view to pay close attention to my mother.

  “Movie companies rent this place for location shoots,” Xan explained as he stopped the limo. “Ten grand a day, fully furnished. Your own furniture is in storage. I hope you don’t mind. When they found termites at the parish house on Rodeo Drive, the board had to scramble. One of the members owns the place.”

  I looked at my brother and sister. They were clearly in as much shock as I was.

  We got out. In front of us was a three-story gleaming white mansion, easily ten times the size of the place on Rodeo Drive. One end of the driveway was big enough to hold fifteen or twenty cars and paved not with black asphalt, but with red brick that made me think of Mexico. The home itself was massive, all blocks and right angles, with a white brick walkway that led to a double mahogany front door.

  “Um, there aren’t any windows,” Gemma noted.

  “Not in front,” Xan said. “The architect wanted it that way. Wait till you get around the back. You can see everything. The city, the mountains, the ocean. The view is killer.”

  To our surprise, the front door opened. An extremely tan woman with a precise blond bob and a thin figure stepped out. Behind her were three teenagers. There were two girls about my age, equally thin and blond. One was tall, with those thick straight-across eyebrow-brushing bangs that look great on some people but make other people’s heads look like bowling balls. She was in the non–bowling ball group. She wore a pink and white floral sundress and sandals. The other girl was round-faced and petite under her layered camis and white shorts. The third teenager was a guy with short rust-colored hair and a wide grin. My guess? He was around Chad’s age. Which meant that Chad looked like the guy’s babysitter.

  “Welcome!” the lady shouted. “You must be the rest of the Sheltons! Welcome to Los Angeles. Come in, come in! I’m Connie Kay from church, and these are three members of our youth group, Sandra, Lisa, and Trevor. We’re sort of your unofficial welcoming committee. Let us show you around your new home!”

  My dad shook Connie’s French-manicured hand. “Thank you. But … this is just temporary. Till the termite problem gets fixed. Right?”

  Connie shrugged cheerfully.

  “Because it’s very … opulent for a minister’s family,” he added. “Not that we don’t appreciate it.”

  “Actually, we love it,” Gemma gushed.

  “You’ll love it even more when you see the inside,” Sandra, the taller of the two girls, said. “Time for your tour! And welcome.”

  I, Natalie Shelton of Mankato, Minnesota, was about to step into my very own Cribs.

  Chapter Two

  I turned when I heard the familiar sound of our Saturn’s dicey muffler. My mother was back. I was so glad to see her that I temporarily forgot about Connie, her teen minions, and my transgression of biblical proportions that had taken place the night before.

  I ran to her as she got out of the car. So did the rest of the family. There were actually tears on my dad’s cheeks. Aww. They’d only been separated a week. It made me realize that this whole moving thing had to be tough on him, no matter how often he said he supported my mom’s decision. He had as many friends out here as I did. Which is to say none.

  We shared a group hug, which might have been smarmy in any other circumstances but at that moment felt just right.

  “That welcome does not mean you can bring home Cs on your report card,” my mom teased when we broke apart. Then, s
potting the welcoming committee, she turned all business. “Come on, everyone. These good people have been waiting an hour for you. Come say hello.” She winked at me. “I think you’re going to like your room.”

  Ten minutes later, Xan had quietly taken his leave, Gemma was with Lisa, Trevor was with Chad, my parents were with Connie, and I was being shown through my new abode by Sandra. Yes, it was big. Yes, it was spectacular. Connie had said, and I quote, “It’s a masterpiece of cubistic forms and volumes that are framed by head-on city, canyon, and ocean views. It reflects a spirited interplay of space, color, and light that is typical of the architect’s work. The architect, Ricardo Legorreta, tried to pull in elements of Picasso, Mexico, and the natural beauty of Southern California. It’s really quite spectacular.”

  As we say in Minnesota, you betcha.

  Anyway, Sandra took me on the grand tour. Even as I came to know her, like her, and realize that she and I might become friends, I decided I hated the house.

  We entered via a long brick walkway, with a lattice fence to our right and several big cactuses beyond that. A series of concrete boxes delineated one side of the walkway and kept people from wandering down a hillside that dropped steeply. The mahogany doors opened to a stark downstairs interior, with very little furniture, a few mirrors, and blindingly white walls with tops that angled rather niftily instead of meeting the ceiling. There was a burnt-sienna parquet wood floor and two huge picture windows that looked out toward the ocean ten miles away.

  “Look at this living room!” Sandra gushed as she brought me to it. “You can see the Pacific from the windows!”

  The view was, admittedly, striking. The problem was, for a living room, you really couldn’t do much living in it. Looking Lilliputian in the middle of all this open space were two white leather couches that faced each other, with a mosaic coffee table in between that held several pieces of southwestern folk art. The table sat on an intricately designed handwoven rug.

  “Nice, don’t you think?” Sandra prompted me. “You really get fooled, because even though there are no windows in front, there are tons of them in back. Nice!” She was obviously eager to please.