“Like Yale wealth?” she’d asked. She was the only other Chen to have attended my alma mater. It’s where she’d originally met Seth.
“Different. Yale was old money. East Coast. Slightly more discreet. This is Hollywood ostentatious. It’s competitive wealth. These people aren’t wearing L.L.Bean.”
“Got it.”
And so the two of us, along with Minnie, Anouk, and four other women, found ourselves clustered around an exquisitely dressed teak dining table, soaking up the conversation and the light.
The house, mostly cement and glass, was a long, narrow, three-story refuge, squeezed between two other seven-to-twelve-million-dollar structures upon tiny slips of sand, on what I understood was a highly coveted strip of Malibu. Someone with a long enough wingspan could easily stand between the foundations and touch both.
I thought of the beach house my Uncle Neville had in Oracabessa when we were growing up. The house at which I’d almost drowned at the age of three when a rogue wave knocked me out of my father’s arms and into the surf, providing me with my first true memory. It was a sizable parcel of oceanfront property on Jamaica’s north coast. No traffic, no neighbors, no noise. A rustic three-bedroom bungalow with a wraparound veranda and crystal waters as far as the eye could see.
There were no wraparound verandas here. Not with a house eight feet to the left, another eight feet to the right, and the Pacific Coast Highway holding in the backyard. And not for the first time, I wondered exactly what was so special about Los Angeles.
“So are y’all loving it here?” Brooke, one of Minnie’s friends, asks. She’s a Tennessee blond, who looks an awful lot like Minnie, but with bangs and a pointier chin, and like Kennedy, the other blond in attendance (tan, leggy), sitting at the opposite end of the table. I would not be surprised if they all had the same colorist. Fortunately, Minnie (or someone on Minnie’s staff) had made place cards to keep it all straight.
“My husband is. The kids seem to be. I’m still settling in, I think.”
“Well, LA can be a little daunting. But once you find your people, and you can drive without consulting your GPS, you’ll be fine.”
“You’re lucky you have GPS,” Tracee, the woman to my left, says. She’s Black, I assume African American, by her slight twang. She’s got copper skin and Beyoncé highlights and large doe eyes. Her eyelashes are not her own. “When we got here, I didn’t know where a damn thing was, and I had myThomas Guide. I’d have it all splayed out in the G-Wagon, and Danté was like, ‘What are you doing? Just get a driver!’ But, like, come on, now. I’m not using a driver to go to Ralphs!”
“Ralphs??” Minnie smiles. “You did not shop at Ralphs!”
“I most certainly did. You can’t get fried chicken at Whole Foods.”
“Honey’s Kettle has the best fried chicken. Better than Roscoe’s, in my humble opinion.” Hayden, the brunette to my right, speaks up. Porcelain skin, frozen forehead, three Cartier Love bracelets. “Our chef turned us on to it.”
“Girl, I’m in the Valley. That’s a day trip.”
“Your chef serves you store-bought fried chicken?” Kennedy with the legs raises an eyebrow.
“God, no. She does her own in a gluten-free batter, but she does recommend it for large groups. I mean, in a pinch.”
I catch Jane’s eyes widening across the table. Slightly amused, a touch bewildered. The LA references, the casual displays of wealth. The Florentine-inspired tablescape with perfectly placed sprigs of wildflowers. I am not so ensconced in the bubble as to miss it, but I imagine to Jane, this lunch may as well be the Mad Hatter’s tea party. The coterie: two former models, an actress, and a PR girl who now play the role of pampered housewives to a studio exec, two producers, and a WME agent. Although not in that order. Not to mention the token Black friend who was the onetime high school sweetheart, now wife of the Clippers’ point guard.
“Anyway, eventually there was MapQuest,” Tracee resumes, her long nails clicking against her champagne flute, “and then GPS, but in the beginning, it was like, shiiiiit… the Wild West. And we’re from Oklahoma. Do you have kids?”
“I do. A boy and a girl.”
“Two boys. Where are y’all at school?”
“Bancroft.”
“Well done.” Minnie smiles. “They have excellent exmissions.”
“Exmissions?”
“Graduates who go on to the Ivies and Stanford. Like Harvard-Westlake, but less cutthroat. Warmer. But not as hippy-dippy as Windwood. It’s a good middle ground. Solid choice.”
I want to tell her that we are not planning to stay for long, and soexmissionsand Ivies didn’t really matter, but before I can do so, Tracee weighs in.
“We’re at Sierra Canyon,” she says, “but we’re athletes. And in Calabasas.”
“Anouk, I saw your new billboard on Sunset,” Kennedy pipes upfrom her end of the table, a men’s Rolex sliding over her wrist as she swirls her wineglass. “The Louis Vuitton ad. It’s stunning. Is it Juergen?”
“It is.”
“So pretty. You still look like you’re twenty-nine.”
