Palm Springs Heat (4 page)

“I thought it was your night off.”

“Yes, sir. Your guest is arriving.
Would you like me to escort her up to The Box?”

“No. I’ll be right down.”

 

* * *

 

Lara looked out the window as the
limo Clay had sent moved slowly up

Rodeo Drive
.
Two limo rides in one week!
This ride, though, was tinged with
melancholy. Lara thought about her previous visits to this neighborhood. Like
most people who walk this mile without the money to back it up, she had always
felt like a rubberneck.
An interloper.
A tourist in her own hometown.
She had grown up in a nice
enough
neighborhood
in the valley, but the valley was
nonetheless on the wrong side of the proverbial tracks. Except that the barrier
separating Lara’s L.A. from here
wasn’t railroad tracks, but mountains.

During her marriage to Kyle Lobo, a
producer of low-budget, straight-to-video actioners like
Death Chase
and
Terror Strike: Bel Air
(which had been shot entirely in Encino), Lara
had ventured into the shimmering swimming pool of Beverly
Hills on occasion. But with her budget, she was barely
able to dip her toes into the water.

The car passed a Catalan eatery
that charged sixty-five dollars for a hamburger and fries. It amazed her how
many people were accustomed to the high cost of extravagance. The dress she was
wearing was extravagant, but Gina hadn’t batted an eyelash when they found it
at Century City.
White cotton with a scoop neck and puffs of
pima
encircling her waist, it looked like something Gina would buy for herself. And
while Lara could tell why it didn’t cost $23.95, she also saw no reason it
should cost nine hundred dollars. Especially since she was wearing it to a
glorified sports bar. On the other hand, it looked great with her new dark
hair.

The limo pulled to the curb, and as
Lara got out, she found herself looking into the face of a pretty young blonde
she knew she’d seen somewhere before. On TV? Singing? The blonde looked Lara
over with a steely gaze, a look reserved for serious competitors in the mating
game, before turning her head with a flick of her ponytail and marching off
with her nose high in the air.

That is a very good sign.

An imposing doorman in a coat with
epaulets that made his shoulders look even bigger intercepted Lara as she
approached the entrance to Rev.

“Welcome, Miss Dixon,” he said in a
decidedly unimposing voice. “Mr. Creighton is waiting for you.”

“Actually,” came Clay’s voice from
just beyond the doorman, “Mr. Creighton couldn’t wait, so he came down to meet
you himself.”

The doorman stepped back as Clay
stepped up. “I see you’ve already met Chip,” Clay said. The doorman nodded
politely. “And that’s my security man, Turnbow.”

Turnbow stood against the building,
keeping his eyes peeled. He looked like a bank robber.

Chip opened the door.

“Shall we?” Clay placed his hand in
the small of Lara’s back. Just that gentle touch sent a zing of electric energy
through her body.
Did he feel that, too?

When they were inside, Turnbow put
a hand on Clay’s shoulder and tried to speak to him privately, but Lara could
hear him just fine.

“I assume you will be going to your
box?”

“Actually, I assume we’ll go to the
main floor.”

“I think your guest might enjoy the
more intimate atmosphere of The Box.” Turnbow nodded at Lara and smiled.

“Why don’t we ask her? Lara, would
you like to go to my private dining room, or to the main floor and rub elbows
with the rabble?”

“I don’t expect any special
privileges,” Lara said, smiling back at Turnbow.

“You know I own the place,” Clay
said. “That means I can dole out privileges to whomever I please.”

“I wouldn’t mind hanging out with
the rabble.”

“That settles it, then,” Clay said
as he guided Lara toward the elevator.

Chip the doorman threw the door to
the street open, and shrieks of pubescent girls filled the vestibule. Turnbow
joined Chip in forming a human barricade to let a scruffy young man and his
entourage slip inside. Lara recognized him from billboards advertising the
upcoming initial installment of the umpteenth series of hunky teen vampire
movies.
Not bad looking, but a far cry from what’s on the billboards.

Chip and Turnbow managed to stave
off the worshippers and get the door closed, but the shrieks still came through
loud and clear.

The young lion slouched and
shuffled along amidst his unsavory clique—big dudes with shaved heads and lots
of tattoos, and women with fake breasts and tramp stamps who looked like they’d
been plucked from an Arkansas trailer park.

“Is that…?” Lara wondered.

“Ah, yes.” Clay gave the James Dean
wannabe a nod of recognition. “I was told he might be coming tonight. Would you
like to meet him?”

Lara gave the pretentious cadre of
celebrity handlers the once-over.

“Do they always travel with their
own armies?”

“The young ones do—until they
discover that most of them are leeches and crooks.”

“Oh.”

“You know,” Clay said, “here’s
another privilege that comes with ownership.”

He led her around a corner to where
a guard stood watch over an unassuming door.

“Evening, Mr. C.” The guard punched
some numbers on a keypad and the unassuming door opened to the most lavishly
appointed elevator Lara had ever seen.

 

3

 

The elevator was lined with richly
finished bamboo paneling alternating with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The ceiling
itself was one big mirror.

“Interesting décor,” Lara mused
when they were safely inside. “I wouldn’t have expected you to be so big on
Asian themes.”

“I’m big on Asian themes?” Clay
said as he pressed a button.

“The tiki torches at the party the
other night?”

“Oh, right. I like tiki torches,”
Clay said in a faraway voice. Then he snapped back into the moment. “This was a
freight elevator before I took over the building—and it was trashed. I went
with bamboo because it was the most environmentally responsible material.”

Environmentally responsible?
It sounded weird, somehow, to hear him say it, though Lara could recall having
read something at the Fast Lane website about sustainable materials.
Specifically, materials that were sustainable as well as exotic and expensive.
Tree-hugging just for the sake of saving the Earth didn’t fit the übermanly
metropolitan male.

The door opened to the dining room.
To say it was gaudy would be kind. Rev didn’t just flirt with tackiness, it
made wild love to it. It resembled a sports stadium, with tables on a playing
field in the center surrounded by concentric rings of tables on tiers that
looked like stands. Diners in the lowest rings even sat in fold-down plastic
grandstand seats and ate from retractable trays. A ring of private rooms that
mimicked luxury boxes lorded over the entire scene.

So this is what a gazillion
dollars buys?

Lara realized Rev went beyond the
wildest dreams of Fast Lane’s founder, Clay’s father, Chase. The magazine
flourished during the Swinging Sixties with smartly written articles on
politics, business, cars, music, travel—and how to mix drinks, dress right and
impress women. There were also pictures of shapely girls in swimsuits, though
the swimsuits gradually got smaller, then optional, then disappeared.

Chase Creighton died when his
ultralight plane crashed into a cliff near Malibu,
leaving Clay in charge at age twenty-three. Clay made no changes until taking
Fast Lane exclusively online ten years later. After that, the company expanded
into all kinds of moneymaking ventures, including the Toy Store, a resort in Palm
Springs and Rev.

Lara stepped out of the elevator
and onto Astroturf painted with a giant number 50.

“It’s football night,” Clay said,
as though that explained everything. Lara gave him a blank look. He pointed
toward glowing H-shaped neon tubes that dominated opposite ends of the room.

“I thought Rev was all about
racing,” Lara said.

“Thursday is racing night.”

“I suppose you take all this out
and put in a racetrack every Thursday.” Lara said it with tongue in cheek. She
knew what went on at Rev. She just thought it would be best to act as if she
didn’t.

“That’s exactly what we do,” Clay
said. “My marketing people suggested the name Rev to go with Fast Lane, but I
didn’t want it to be just about racing, so Sushma came up with the idea of
changing the décor from one night to the next.” Lara recognized the name of
Sushma Vishnuveda, a former Rotation member who had risen quickly in the past
few years to the highest echelons of the Fast Lane empire. “We can do
basketball, baseball, hockey—”

“Hockey? Do the waiters have to
skate?”

“That
would
be fun,” Clay
laughed, “but no, we put down acetate sheets that look more like ice than real
ice does. I know that sounds unbelievable, but it really does.”

“Do you have a synchronized
swimming night?”

“I’m not sure that would appeal to
the demo.”

Lara scanned “the demo.” Every
table was occupied. She thought she recognized a face or two. Movie stars.
Athletes. At least one cable news anchor. She could see into the boxes whose
giant smoked-glass panels were open and revealed the private parties inside.
But no matter where they sat, people seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The people especially seemed to
enjoy sneaking peeks at Lara and Clay as they walked across the floor. Lara
struggled to look comfortable in spite of her mounting self-consciousness, but
something must have tipped off Clay.

“Maybe you’d rather go to my
personal box after all,” he said.

It might be easier.
Then
again, she didn’t want to make things
too
easy.

“We can stay down here,” she said.

“Great,” Clay said as they came to
the last empty table, under one of the neon goalposts. Clay pulled out a chair
for her. “So, is this what you thought the illustrious Rev would be like?”

“I’d heard it was so…”

“Opulent?”

“Yeah.”

“Ritzy? Swank? Classy?” He
pronounced “classy” as “cuh-lassie,” as though it had three syllables.

“Classy sounds right.”

“Tell me what you’re really
thinking.” His eyes so gleamed and his face looked so sincere that it was easy
to believe he meant it. “

“I’m thinking it’s unbelievably
tacky.” Lara stopped. “Ooh. That was a little direct.”

Clay laughed. “I like direct.
Besides, this place
is
tacky. So tacky, it’s cool.”

“But all these people. They’re so…”
Her voice tapered away.

“They’re so what?”

“Rich. And famous. And successful.”

“And, what? You think just because
they’re rich and famous they have good taste?”

Lara laughed, which brought a
satisfied smile to Clay’s face as a waitress wearing a tight-fitting, low-cut
referee’s jersey and hot pants came to the table.

“Are you ready, Miss Dixon? Mr. C?”

“Oh, but I haven’t even seen a
menu.”

“Menu?” The waitress looked to Clay
for an explanation.

“We’ll both just have the special,”
he said. Lara agreed with a shrug. The waitress turned and snapped her fingers,
and a guy dressed as a stadium beer vendor lugged over a cooler full of
classic-recipe Schlitz and lager glasses on ice. He popped the tops of two
bottles and then, holding them by their necks in one hand, simultaneously
emptied them into two glasses he held in the other.

“Wow,” Lara said, impressed.

She and Clay clinked glasses. As
they sipped their beers, a short, Rubenesque biker-leather-clad woman of
forty-five with big 1980s-style orange-red hair, no neck and a
twenty-two-year-old emo boy with pierced eyebrows and cheeks in tow approached
the table.

“Hey, C,” the redhead said.

“Lucretia!” Clay started to get up.

“Don’t get up on my account,” the
redhead protested. She turned to the guy. “Muggs, do
you
want him to
stand?”

Muggs shrugged and shook his head
so that more of his jet-black hair flopped into his face. Clay sat back down.
“Lara,” he said, “this is—”

“Lucretia Moray,” Lara said.
“You’re on my iPod.”

It was true, though just barely.
Lara had exactly one of Lucretia Moray’s noisy, obscenity-laced songs.

 “I have some new shit coming
out in a month. No fuckin’ ballads this time. Just balls-on rock ’n’ roll.”

Lara didn’t fully hear what
Lucretia said. She was preoccupied with Clay, who seemed to be making a
cutting-off motion with his fingers right at the bottom of his nose.

“Um…great,” Lara said, hoping that
was the correct response.

“Anyway, C, we just wanted to come
over and check out your…um…date? Nice meeting you, Laura.”

“Lara,” Muggs said.

“What?”

“Her name’s
Lara
, not
Laura
.
God!” Muggs sounded irritated—and way too much like Napoleon Dynamite.

Lucretia did not look amused. “You
can kiss my enormously fat, ghost-white ass,” she said. She flicked even more
of Muggs’ hair into his face, then turned to Lara and said, “They can be such
children.”

And with that, she trundled off
with Muggs shuffling behind.

 “That was weird,” Lara said.

“Um…” Clay used his napkin to wipe
foam from Lara’s lip.

“Oh, no…did I…the whole time?”

“I wouldn’t let it bother you. How embarrassed
can you be about something like that when you’re talking to a woman who’s
wearing assless chaps with nothing underneath but a leather thong?”

“What?” Lara looked across the room
to where Lucretia waited for the elevator, covered chin to toe in black—except
for significant portions of her considerable snow-white butt cheeks outlined by
shiny rings of burnished steel studs.