Amen, L.A. Read online

  As a rule, I am a bad sleeper. Odd, I know. It takes me a long time to fall asleep, and I have some weird sleeping quirks, like sticking one bare ankle out from under the comforter as a way to stay cool. Sleeping in a new place was the worst; motel stays, or sleepovers at a friend’s house, or the occasional family camping trip up to northern Minnesota were prescriptions for up-all-night.

  To my shock and pleasant surprise, that first night in Ricardo Montalban’s mansion (I’d Googled him; he’d been on this early eighties show called Fantasy Island), I slept great. In fact, I slept until noon the next day, which normally would be against the law with my parents, but slack was cut in my direction due to the circumstances. I spent the afternoon puttering around, getting to know where everything was in the house, and sitting on the back deck with my MacBook, sending emails to my Mankato friends. I tried to reach Sean a few times, and he tried to reach me, but it was a game of phone tag. No shocker there. Cell reception at the Mankato Mall was always kind of dicey.

  So. That night. Hollywood Forever.

  Alex drove. Or I should say, Alex’s driver drove, since there are restricted licenses in California and you’re not supposed to have another kid in the car if you’re seventeen. We took her red 1966 BMW convertible, which was awesome and also my first convertible ride ever. The two of us sat in the backseat, drinking Pellegrino water from the bottle, as the driver, a Jamaican man named Sasha, with fabulous dreadlocks to his waist, expertly maneuvered us through the Saturday-night traffic out of the hills, east along Sunset Boulevard, and then onto Santa Monica Boulevard to the cemetery.

  I don’t mind admitting that the whole death thing scared the crap out of me. Like sometimes I would be hanging out with my friends, or doing homework, or lying in bed at night in that zone between awake and asleep, and suddenly it would hit me that I was going to die. Like, one day there would not be a me. At least, not an earthly me. I know I’m supposed to take comfort from the whole you-get-to-go-be-with-Jesus thing. But—and please don’t tell my mother this—I don’t.

  Even though Alex had explained the concept of movies at the cemetery, I was having a hard time picturing it. Where I come from, cemeteries are for dead people. And dead people are, well, dead.

  As usual, my mother had something to say as I was getting ready to go. She was hanging out with my dad in the kitchen while he baked a sour cream chocolate chip coffee cake.

  “Didn’t you say that a lot of movie stars are buried there?” she asked me as he spooned the batter into the cake pan.

  “Marilyn Monroe. Rudolph Valentino. A bunch of others.” I’d done my homework.

  “Then I’d say showing movies there makes a lot of sense,” my mom concluded. “I hope Marilyn and Rudolph enjoy the show. As for the crowd? I’d say those stars loved crowds.”

  The cemetery was on the south side of Santa Monica near North Gower, and Sasha dropped us at the entrance, saying that all Alex had to do was text him and he’d be there in fifteen minutes. We got out, and I was happy to see that I’d chosen the right clothing. People were streaming into the cemetery and everyone was dressed down, mostly in T-shirts and jeans, carrying picnic baskets, blankets, and low lawn chairs. I had on Wrangler jeans, an Old Navy white tank top, and a lavender beaded cardigan (from Encore in Old Town, my fave vintage store in Mankato, not that we had more than a few) rolled up in my purse in case it got cool. Alex wore jeans, too, except hers were Denim of Virtue, which I knew from reading the same magazines that every other girl reads cost more than two hundred dollars, and a blue silk hand-embroidered camisole under a sheer white kimono. Her hair was up in an artfully messy bun with tendrils hanging around her face. My hair was in a ponytail. With a scrunchie. When I saw Alex’s hair, I quickly pulled the scrunchie out and shoved it into my purse.

  We made our donation—ten dollars each—and stepped through the entry gates. The place was huge, all mausoleums, obelisks, and manicured grounds. Alex gave me the quick tour, pointing out the final resting places of Rudolph Valentino, the great director Cecil B. DeMille, and Charlie Chaplin Jr., as we approached the central grassy plaza, where the movie would be projected onto the side of one of the mausoleums. The central plaza itself was covered with people—a few thousand, I’d guess. They were mostly young and mostly beautiful, and the picnics being unpacked were more-than-mostly beautiful, too.

  A Mankato picnic would consist of fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, and maybe some fruit or homemade cake or cookies, all served up on paper plates. The main beverages would be soft drinks for everyone underage and a beer option for the adults. At Hollywood Forever, as Alex and I snaked around hundreds of picnics in progress, I saw incredible spreads: fruit and cheese plates; Japanese food; Indian food; deli food, like bagels and pastrami; and some of the most mouthwatering barbecue ever. People were eating off china plates with real silverware. The beverages ranged from soft drinks to high-end champagne kept cold in ice-filled buckets.

  Guided by text messages, we found Alex’s friends. There were four of them, two guys and two girls, on a cherry red blanket with matching gold and red pillows. Alex introduced me around. There was Brooke Summers—alabaster skin and pool blue eyes on a skinny five-foot-five body, with raven black hair in beachy waves to the middle of her back. Brooke wore 7 For All Mankind white jeans that were frayed and ripped up and down each leg. I knew that they came that way, and that these distressed jeans were even more expensive than the ones Alex had on.

  There are starving children all over the world. Isn’t it kind of just … wrong to pay hundreds of dollars to purchase new ripped jeans when you could just buy the non-ripped jeans, rip ’em up yourself, and then donate the extra money to charity?

  Moving on. The other girl was Skye Lewis. She was nearly six feet tall, with a model-thin body, cheekbones to die for, and short, choppy blond hair. I learned quickly that she was, indeed, a model, who did a lot of catalog work. Suffice it to say, as blessed as she was physically, she was … um … not too blessed mentally. I would never call her a dumb model, because she was really sweet, plus I hate mean people who say stuff like that, but—full disclosure—I did think it for about a nanosecond when she said that elevator buttons confused her, because, like, if she pressed the “up” arrow, did that mean that she was up and wanted the elevator to take her down or that she was down and wanted the elevator to come take her up? I exaggerate only a little.

  The first guy I met was Gray Marshall. He was Justin Timberlake cute, with a golden tan, curly dark blond hair, and a muscular body, dressed in black jeans and a fitted plaid button-down. When Alex introduced us, he gave me a convivial hug.

  Then there was Brett Goldstein.

  I’ve read stories about girls meeting guys who actually took their breath away. I always figured this stuff only happened in chick flicks starring Kate Hudson. That it happened to me, two nights after I lost my virginity, was a bit much to digest.

  Brett was medium tall, with sinewy leg muscles below his cargo shorts, ditto the biceps in his Bob Marley T-shirt. His eyes and hair were the color of Belgian chocolate. He had a defined jawline with a cleft in his chin, shaded by a day or so of stubble, which normally is not a look I go for, because you just know the guy left the stubble so he’d look cool, and trying to look cool is just so … not. I’d say he looked like Joe Jonas but I’m not going to—because unlike every other girl who went to my church back in Mankato, I really could not stand the Jonas Brothers’ music.

  So really, I was prepared not to like Brett. Then he smiled. The grin spread across his face, wide and open. It made his eyes dance.

  “Nice to meet you, Natalie.” He took my hand, held it, and looked directly into my eyes, his voice deep and smooth like hot honey and at the same time kind and sincere. “Welcome to L.A.,” he added, still holding my hand. “You’re going to love it.”

  Welcome to L.A., Natalie? You’re going to love it? Ya think?

  An electrical charge shot from his hand into my hand, up my arm, into my head, whe
re it buzzed while my stomach flip-flopped.

  “Where’d you move here from?” Brett asked when he finally let go.

  “Minnesota,” I replied, and added what I hoped was a comical “you betcha” in a Minnesota accent. I figured, when rendered nearly mute by an instant crush, go for the humor. Fortunately, he laughed.

  I quickly learned that Skye was his girlfriend. Small detail. But a girl can dream.

  We settled down to eat before the movie. They’d brought an astonishing picnic of their own, takeout from a sushi place in Beverly Hills called Yu-N-Mi. It was incredible: sea urchins, mackerel, salmon, ahi, a fantastic roll made from soft-shell crab and shad roe—the only reason I know this is that they told me what each kind of sushi was, since the only kind I’d ever had came packaged at the supermarket in Mankato—and a cooler full of cans of raspberry iced tea and bottled Fiji water.

  “What brings you to Los Angeles, Natalie?” Brooke asked after she’d downed a piece of the ahi.

  “My mother’s a minister,” I said. “She was called to a pulpit here.”

  “At what church?”

  “The Church of Beverly Hills. Do you know it?” I asked.

  “Know it, don’t belong to it,” Gray declared. He reached for one of the soft-shell crab rolls. “I’m not really into the whole organized-religion thing.”

  “Me neither,” Skye agreed. “I think Buddhism is pretty cool, though.”

  Brooke shot her a look. “What do you know about Buddhism?”

  Skye pushed her choppy bangs off her forehead. “They don’t eat cows, and neither do I.”

  “We went to In-N-Out Burger yesterday and you polished off a double-double,” Brett reminded her.

  “That was hamburger,” Skye pointed out with dignity, licking some wasabi off her pinkie finger. “Not cow.”

  Alex leaned over and kissed Skye on the cheek good-naturedly. “You are one of a kind.”

  “Maybe not,” Skye said. “I also believe in reincarnation.”

  “Well, I’m Jewish,” Brett said, biting into the salmon. “My family goes to Temple Emanuel.”

  “Like half of Los Angeles,” Alex joked. She leaned her head back on Brooke’s thigh like they’d been hanging out forever. I learned later they’d been friends since preschool.

  “More than that,” Brett quipped. “Half a million Jews in Los Angeles, and growing.”

  Huh. I hadn’t thought of that. Back in Mankato, there were a few Jewish families—I knew Caitlin Rosenbloom in my grade, for example. But there wasn’t even a synagogue in Mankato. The Jewish kids I knew went to the one in Rochester, seventy-five miles away.

  Then Alex, Brooke, Gray, and Skye started playing Do or Die, where you have to choose between having sex with a certain famous person or dying instead—the point being to pick the grossest people possible. Brett didn’t join in—which gave him extra points in my book.

  “Iced tea?” he asked me as he reached into the cooler.

  “Sure.” I took the can he offered and popped it open. “Thanks.”

  “What do you think of Los Angeles so far?” he asked.

  I gave a little laugh. “It’s … big. And I’m living in a big house. I think it belonged to Ricardo Montalban. At least, that’s what the real estate agent said.”

  His eyes rose skyward in surprise. “Damn. Talk about Christian charity,” he joked.

  I laughed again, uncomfortably. “It’s kind of an accident.” I told him about the termites at the place on Rodeo Drive.

  “Maybe it was all a setup.” He popped open his own can of iced tea and gave me a steady look. “To seduce you.”

  Okay, so I blushed. “Why would anyone want to seduce me?” I blurted out.

  The moment these words were out of my mouth, I would have done anything to be playing Do or Die.

  He gave me a half smile, clearly aware of how flustered he was making me, and clearly enjoying it. “I meant, to impress your family.”

  “Right,” I mumbled. “I knew that.”

  “Rosie O’Donnell!” Brooke squealed to Gray on the other side of the blanket. “Do or die?”

  “I’m already dead,” Gray cracked.

  Brett leaned back, upper body propped up on his elbows. “Tell me about your hometown. Man—what is it again?”

  “Mankato.”

  “Fly-over country,” Brett said. “That’s what they call it here.”

  I shrugged. “That’s kind of small-minded. Anyway, it’s their loss. I love it there.”

  “Tell me about it. Tell me three things that are great.”

  He said it like he really wanted to know. So I told him. What it was like to walk outside on a June night, strolling through fireflies so thick you thought you were in the middle of the Milky Way. What it was like to wait for the school bus in blinding snow in December, with air so cold the mucus froze in your nose. What it was like to know everyone on your street by their first names, and how if a visitor came from out of state, everyone stopped by to introduce themselves and say hello, with homemade baked goods or a casserole in hand.

  “Sounds nice,” Brett commented as he reached for a chocolate-covered strawberry in a separate box. “New people moved in next door to us last year. I can’t even tell you their name.” Instead of eating the strawberry, he held the stem and dangled it near my lips. I opened my mouth and took a bite, feeling both daring and self-conscious. Impossibly beautiful Skye looked over at us and waggled her fingers happily. Evidently she didn’t consider me a threat. Well, who could blame her? Not that I would ever be a threat, even if Brett was into me. I am not a boy poacher.

  I washed the strawberry down with some tea. “I love it there,” I told him. “It’s home.”

  “You must miss it already.” His voice picked up my sadness.

  “I do.”

  We talked some more, and he told me about some of the really great places in L.A. that I had to visit, like the Santa Monica Pier and the Getty Center. Then it was time for the movie to start.

  I have to tell you, there’s nothing like watching Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the open air on a Los Angeles night. The sound was great and the crowd was into it—three thousand people laughing their heads off and then holding their breath even though they knew that Tom and Meg would meet up. I didn’t even mind when I saw Skye rest her head in Brett’s lap. Much.

  When the movie was over, everyone applauded, then packed up to leave.

  “Hey, I’ve got a great idea,” Brooke announced. “Who’s up for the lookout at Double P?”

  “Pacific Palisades,” Skye said, translating for me. “It’s on this cliff above the Pacific. You can see all the way down to Long Beach.”

  Brooke threw her hands in the air and did a sexy little butt wiggle. “Par-tay!” she called.

  I looked at Alex. If she wanted to go, it sounded okay to me.

  “Forget it,” she told Brooke.

  “Wuss,” Brooke fired back.

  “I said forget it, and I mean forget it. I don’t go there anymore.” Alex was adamant.

  “Oh my, it really is the new Alex,” Brooke jeered.

  “Chill,” Brett told Brooke under his breath.

  “Gawd, since when did everyone get so freaking serious?” Brooke moaned. She pivoted toward Alex. “Why don’t you just give up your friends while you’re at it?”

  Alex’s jaw set hard. She took my arm. “Come on, Natalie. We’re outta here.”

  Ten seconds later, we were tramping with the rest of the crowd toward the exit. Brett had said goodbye and that it was good to meet me, but the others were as stony now as they’d been friendly before.

  “What was that about?” I asked as Alex texted Sasha to come and pick us up.

  “Nothing,” she muttered.

  Well, that was obviously a lie. But begging a brand-new friend for confidences is stupid. So I leaned against a lamppost as we waited for our ride, doing my best to think about Sean, but with visions of Brett dancing in my head.

  Chapter Five<
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  Sunday morning. Church. But not like any church I’d ever been to before.

  Call me superstitious or call me eccentric, but I had decided not to set foot in the Church of Beverly Hills until my first worship service. I hadn’t engaged in a total boycott, though. I’d obviously looked up the church website, seen the pictures, and even taken the virtual tour. I knew that the building could hold two thousand people for a single worship service, that there were a choir of fifty and an orchestra of ten, that there was a Sunday school with an enrollment bigger than some high schools in Minnesota, and that there were two Sunday worship sessions—one from nine until ten-thirty, the second from eleven to twelve-thirty, with a catered luncheon in the church social hall to follow.

  My mother, as you can imagine, had help. On the pastoral side, there was a young man—emphasis on “young,” since he was still in his mid twenties—named Thomas Bienvenu, who’d graduated from seminary two years before and was the church’s junior minister. I hadn’t yet met him. Sandra hadn’t mentioned him, but the website said he did a lot of work with kids and teens. Thomas and my mom had solid administrative support. There was a well-equipped front office with a full-time administrator, a Sunday school director, and various other staff. It was one of the advantages of a church that didn’t have to worry every minute about its budget.

  It would have been the easiest thing in the world to stop by and say hello to my mother on Saturday. (In case you don’t know, most ministers work six days a week and take Monday off. That is, unless there’s a funeral, or a hospital visitation, or a depressed church member who desperately needs to talk, because their life is truly falling apart in front of them. Being a minister is a 24/7/365 gig. Sometimes I don’t know how my mom does it. I’m not sure I could. Correction: I know I couldn’t.)

  Our first Sunday morning in Beverly Hills—the morning after Hollywood Forever—we’d decided that we kids and my dad would go to the second worship service. In fact, my mom had insisted on it, claiming that she’d probably be so nervous at the first one that she’d be mopping her forehead with a handkerchief every other minute. We arrived at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Palm Drive. The church, a soaring red brick edifice ten stories high, with beautiful stained glass windows that faced the street and a brick multitiered steeple that rose skyward another hundred feet, was located on that corner. At the top of the steeple were carillon bells, which were sounding melodically as we drove up. I recognized the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.