hedge.
Landon leans over and kisses me. “Good.” He is matter-of-fact, but I also sense a possessive thrill underpinning that kiss, as if he thinks he’s won—as if my thinking about it means I will automatically do what he tells me to do.
I unbuckle my seat belt and reach for the door handle.
“Don’t forget we have the big black-tie thing Friday night, okay?” he reminds me.
I get out of the car, then reach into the backseat to grab my bag. I swing it over my shoulder and shut the door. “I won’t forget. Have a great week.”
He flips down his sunglasses and smiles that Captain America smile of his. “You, too, sunshine.”
I wave good-bye and turn up the narrow stone path that leads to my front door. I like how he calls me sunshine. He is like a really great older brother.
Ugh. I shake my head, dig my house keys out of my bag, and walk inside without looking back.
CHAPTER NINE
I drop my bag by the front door and take a deep breath. I love this little house. It’s kind of quirky and holds a mishmash of country-casual furniture that I’ve picked up at garage sales, mixed in with a few modern glass side tables and chrome reading lamps. One wall is all shelves, packed with tons of books and Russian knickknacks and black-and-white photos in small, mismatched frames. I also made a copy of the picture I found in Russia, of my mom and dad, and put that on one of the shelves last week.
I walk into the kitchen, pour myself an iced coffee, and stare out the French doors leading to my small backyard. On either side of the doors are two beautiful fauvist paintings that my mother gave me, and I feel a pang of longing for her.
She is so generous, but it’s always in the most impractical way. Or maybe I’m just ungrateful. This house is the perfect example. My mother bought it on her eighteenth birthday, or so the family lore goes. I think she may have already been sleeping with the producer who made her famous and he may have given her the house. But she likes to tell it this way. She started modeling in Paris when she was fifteen. Her real name was Marie Simone Durand, but she renamed herself Simone. Just Simone. It’s pretty ridiculous that my mother has only one name, like she’s Madonna or something, but that’s how it is.
Simone got a combined print-and-TV modeling job in Los Angeles when she was seventeen and made a name for herself as an early-’80s It Girl. On her grand piano in Bel Air, there are silver-framed photos of her hanging out with Sting, for example.
Anyway, she unexpectedly hit it big as the face and voice of a new men’s cologne that had a silly—but damnably catchy—tagline, “Roulette: Take Your Chances.” When it came out in her throaty, French-accented voice, from her wide-eyed, innocent face, apparently people went crazy. Simone made a small fortune.
Despite her father’s careless parenting in some respects, he was an excellent attorney and incredibly shrewd and attentive when it came to her career. He used Simone’s popularity in France to leverage an unheard-of deal with the American cologne company. Namely, Simone got a percentage of the profits on the product in perpetuity. A year later, wanting to wrest a bit of independence from her father’s control of her finances, she bought the house in Venice, California.
Either she knew what she was doing in terms of real estate (or that producer did) or she lucked out, because the house is a gem. It’s a two-bedroom Cape Cod, with a rickety white picket fence out front and a tiny studio building out back. It’s right on one of the nicest canals and walking distance to all the galleries and restaurants on Abbot Kinney.
For a few years, she pretty much lived the life of a Brat Pack idiot, partying in Venice Beach or flying around the world on the arm of one producer or another. Then she met my father and had me, which put a bit of a wrench in her wild youth, but only a bit. By the time I was two, Simone hit it big with her
Landon leans over and kisses me. “Good.” He is matter-of-fact, but I also sense a possessive thrill underpinning that kiss, as if he thinks he’s won—as if my thinking about it means I will automatically do what he tells me to do.
I unbuckle my seat belt and reach for the door handle.
“Don’t forget we have the big black-tie thing Friday night, okay?” he reminds me.
I get out of the car, then reach into the backseat to grab my bag. I swing it over my shoulder and shut the door. “I won’t forget. Have a great week.”
He flips down his sunglasses and smiles that Captain America smile of his. “You, too, sunshine.”
I wave good-bye and turn up the narrow stone path that leads to my front door. I like how he calls me sunshine. He is like a really great older brother.
Ugh. I shake my head, dig my house keys out of my bag, and walk inside without looking back.
CHAPTER NINE
I drop my bag by the front door and take a deep breath. I love this little house. It’s kind of quirky and holds a mishmash of country-casual furniture that I’ve picked up at garage sales, mixed in with a few modern glass side tables and chrome reading lamps. One wall is all shelves, packed with tons of books and Russian knickknacks and black-and-white photos in small, mismatched frames. I also made a copy of the picture I found in Russia, of my mom and dad, and put that on one of the shelves last week.
I walk into the kitchen, pour myself an iced coffee, and stare out the French doors leading to my small backyard. On either side of the doors are two beautiful fauvist paintings that my mother gave me, and I feel a pang of longing for her.
She is so generous, but it’s always in the most impractical way. Or maybe I’m just ungrateful. This house is the perfect example. My mother bought it on her eighteenth birthday, or so the family lore goes. I think she may have already been sleeping with the producer who made her famous and he may have given her the house. But she likes to tell it this way. She started modeling in Paris when she was fifteen. Her real name was Marie Simone Durand, but she renamed herself Simone. Just Simone. It’s pretty ridiculous that my mother has only one name, like she’s Madonna or something, but that’s how it is.
Simone got a combined print-and-TV modeling job in Los Angeles when she was seventeen and made a name for herself as an early-’80s It Girl. On her grand piano in Bel Air, there are silver-framed photos of her hanging out with Sting, for example.
Anyway, she unexpectedly hit it big as the face and voice of a new men’s cologne that had a silly—but damnably catchy—tagline, “Roulette: Take Your Chances.” When it came out in her throaty, French-accented voice, from her wide-eyed, innocent face, apparently people went crazy. Simone made a small fortune.
Despite her father’s careless parenting in some respects, he was an excellent attorney and incredibly shrewd and attentive when it came to her career. He used Simone’s popularity in France to leverage an unheard-of deal with the American cologne company. Namely, Simone got a percentage of the profits on the product in perpetuity. A year later, wanting to wrest a bit of independence from her father’s control of her finances, she bought the house in Venice, California.
Either she knew what she was doing in terms of real estate (or that producer did) or she lucked out, because the house is a gem. It’s a two-bedroom Cape Cod, with a rickety white picket fence out front and a tiny studio building out back. It’s right on one of the nicest canals and walking distance to all the galleries and restaurants on Abbot Kinney.
For a few years, she pretty much lived the life of a Brat Pack idiot, partying in Venice Beach or flying around the world on the arm of one producer or another. Then she met my father and had me, which put a bit of a wrench in her wild youth, but only a bit. By the time I was two, Simone hit it big with her
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