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Chapter One

The Meet

My God, the wedding was beautiful. So what if the bride with the
translucent skin and white-gold hair (courtesy of the
ex-gay-porn-star hairdresser with the pregnant Amazonian wife) had
fucked every one of the groomsmen at one point or another in her
short life.

Back up. Clarissa Alpert's life wasn't actually as short as she
liked to let on. She deemed herself twenty-eight, which was a
surprise to everyone who'd grown up with her in the relative
impoverishment of the (Lower) Beverly Hills flats, where bungalow
after bungalow had trudged only recently into the
half-million-dollar range. In fact, she was thirty-one, but to her
twenty-seven-and-a-half- ("halves" were still important to the boy)
year-old bridegroom, the damaged scion of an old-money family, she
was twenty-eight. Even her brittle-boned, anorexic,
four-pack-a-day-smoker, Jewish mother, confused by the conviction
of her daughter's lie, came to believe she had given birth to this
unnatural force twenty-eight years ago.

Clarissa had set her sights on Aaron not long after dumping Sean
Penn.

She hadn't really dated Sean Penn. However, Aaron Mason, of the
Mason Department Stores, the largest midlevel chain in the South,
idolized Sean Penn. Aaron, an SMU film school grad, was a nascent
producer, new to Hollywood and its ways. Clarissa had discovered
him tripping off the bus (in this case, out of his 2002 Bentley at
valet parking in front of the Ivy). She always had had a thing for
handicapped men, and finding one who happened to be driving her
favorite luxury vehicle was enough to make Clarissa, confirmed
atheist, a Sunni.

Clarissa had dated all kinds of men with various afflictions --
they ranged from dyslexics to a blind Moby-knockoff singer for a
techno band to a wheelchair-bound Emmy-winning screenwriter.
Clarissa had found herself, unfortunately, in like-plus with the
screenwriter: she had enjoyed wiping spittle from his face, she had
treasured his incoherent affections.

But a screenwriter? And a television screenwriter at that? Clarissa
was only twenty-eight (she insisted); she was not ready to give up
the brass (platinum, Tiffany) ring quite yet.

Aaron's affliction was a clubfoot. Clarissa watched him like a
tiger eyeing a fatted wildebeest as he made his way from his navy
Bentley up the ziggurat-like patio steps of the Ivy to his awaiting
table, where three men with chubby egos yelled obscenities into
tiny cell phones.

The limp cinched the deal.

Their romance was short; two weeks longer, it could have been
called "whirlwind." Clarissa squired her prized cabbage to parties
from the graffitied, Ecstasy-laden banks of Silverlake to the
gilded, coke-encrusted shorelines of Malibu. Aaron could not have
known what hit him, though he may have known (as we'll later learn)
that Clarissa had slept her way, without mercy, regret, mourning or
conscience, through Greater Los Angeles. But he could not have
known that she lied about her age, religion (Episcopalian at the
Bel Air country club, Jewish at Hillcrest), mating habits, hair
color, plastic surgeries, level of education, her mother's nose
job, her upbringing, her downfall, her rehab stay(s), the number of
pregnancies she'd experienced -- three -- without an actual birth,
and that she lied to anyone at any time for any reason.

At least, in the beginning, he could not have known Clarissa was a
sociopath-in-training, as common to L.A. as envy and palm trees. He
could not have known, emerging from the relative norm that is
suburban Georgia, that sociopaths are even more prevalent in Los
Angeles than in Washington, D.C. -- and more celebrated.

And here, Clarissa Alpert was very celebrated, indeed.

Prologue, or How This Whole Mess Got Started

10:42 P.M., New Year's Eve. The following was being scribbled onto
a Le Domaine cloth napkin:

January 1, 2003, Wish List: Men I, Clarissa Alpert, being of
soundish mind and incredible (aux natural!) body, would like to
acquire this year:

1. Bruce Springsteen (too old, married, children [ugh], probably
happy. Level of difficulty: 9+)

2. Peter Morton (rich, Hard Rock (Planet Hollywood?) restaurants,
etc., divorced...rich, rich, rich, engaged. Level of difficulty:
6)

3. Ted Field (rich, heir, ext. rich, likes tall, skinny, beautiful
blondes. Who are 18. Who have proof of being 18. May be difficult:
10)

4. Graydon Carter (ink-hasn't-dried-divorced, dozen or so kids).
Powerful, underlined. Semi-British accent -- yummy AND peculiar.
Level of difficulty: 8+ -- P.S. Prefers classy girls with exquisite
taste...UGH.)

Clarissa Regina Alpert was making up her yearly to-do list. Lists,
she knew, were important to the goal-oriented life; writing them
imbued focus and direction. She had learned this lesson from an
ex-ex-ex...ex boyfriend bartender/actor/stuntman with a permanently
curled lip who learned it from a Dianetics course at the giant,
Smurf-blue Church of Scientology (which he'd joined to meet Tom
Cruise, John Travolta, or, at the very least, Jenna Elfman, better
known as "Dharma").

Clarissa tried to learn one tidbit of knowledge from every man
she'd ever dated; though she was never a great student of school or
life, she happened to be the Valedictorian of Men.

She had written her "Man List" every year, on the New Year, since
she had turned eighteen (twenty-one). Most of her waking minutes
were spent in the company of girlfriends, but this was one
tradition Clarissa saved for her own company; planning her future
demanded her full and immediate attention.

She scribbled on, using Larry the Waiter's chewed pen. She was on
her third Kir Royale, and work was to be done...

"You a screenwriter?" said a voice. Male. (No one in Los Angeles
who appeared to be a writer could be anything but a screenwriter.
Poets and novelists, much like vampires, hate the sun. Even if it's
shrouded behind a smog burkha.)

A gorgeous "hairless" was standing in front of Clarissa. "Hairless"
or "Leos" or "Preschoolers" were terms Clarissa and her girlfriends
used for men under twenty-five.

However, Clarissa looked not at his unmarked, eager face, but at
his shoes.

They were not Prada. They were not Gucci. They were not even
Kenneth Cole.

They looked suspiciously like Hush Puppies. Vomit, Clarissa
thought. Sherman Oaks studio apartment, music industry mailroom
-- or worse, agent-in-training...

"You may leave," Clarissa said, and went back to her mad
scribbling.

"Excuse me? You don't even know -- "

"Go. Away. Now. Take your ball, go on..." She said, with the warmth
of an injured cobra.

Poor boy; he looked shocked. He almost frowned, but, unused to the
expression, settled for a pout.

He made the mistake of trying to talk again.

"Look, I've eaten at your table, comprendez-vous? Not
interested." Clarissa cut him off.

"Bitch." But he used the invective under his breath; the Leo was
afraid.

Clarissa emitted a proper bobcat hiss, her precisely bonded teeth
briefly displayed.

Back to the list. This year, the list had taken on greater
importance.

"Think, Princess," she said to herself. Clarissa checked her watch.
She had many, many girlfriends but they weren't to be trusted with
her secret list. Much as she loved and adored them, why should she
give her friends any ideas? However, she had promised to meet up at
the Playboy Mansion (Silicone Valley, Tits Central, Home of the
Free and the Laid) with her girls later. There was much fun to be
had there among the cheesy food, the failed sitcom stars, the dank,
infamous grotto that reeked of semen, desperate laughs, and cash,
and then, the endless river of gorgeous women, so many they had to
be bused in, and all so aggressively beautiful that ugliness itself
became a welcome commodity.

But right now, there was work to be done.

5...

5. There has to be more than four.

Clarissa thought, out loud, "Have I dated everyone on the
bicoastals?"

Larry the Waiter came by again, lanky as a rubber band. "Si,
oui, affirmative -- that would be a yes in any language," he
said, and set down another champagne cocktail. Without having to be
asked.

All men, Clarissa thought, should be gay
waiters.

"You should know, Mother," Clarissa agreed.

Clarissa wrote a name down.

"Larry the Waiter knows all, Miss All-That-and-More. You've been
sliding in here since you were legal."

5. John F. Kennedy, Jr. (rich, good family, married [unhappily?].
Dead. Level of Difficulty:...8)

"Correction. Before I was legal." Clarissa loved Larry the Waiter.
He was gay, smart, bitchy, and bald. A yummy combo.

"Listen, honey, if you don't land one of these jumbo jets soon, I'm
going to tie a yellow ribbon around your head and declare you a
national emergency."

"I'm not interested in landing just any foolish rich man. Where's
the sport, I ask you?" Clarissa said. And then she added, softly,
"There's a small part of me that wants to fall in love."

Weddings, babies, children, young mothers in SUVs, young fathers
with rolled-up shirtsleeves, old fathers in wheelchairs,
Clarissa was surrounded. Her world had grown up around her, and she
was determined not to be left at the station labeled "She Was So
Cute, Remember?"

Clarissa shook her head like a wet dog. She thought maybe she had
reached her alcohol limit.

"Uh-huh. Which part would that be?" Larry the Waiter looked at her
list and declared it "Sold out. This isn't the nineties."

Clarissa looked down the names. Was he right? Gay waiters are
always right.

"Look, Sweetness. Do you want to end up here in ten years with fake
lips and helmet hair toasting a guy with half a pancreas?"

Clarissa looked at him. "Not Clarissa. I'm not going to end up like
a retired Breck girl." They stared down at the end of the bar. Two
Clairol blondes in their forties, their lips wrapped tightly around
numerous collagen injections, their noses a matched set of early
eighties ski slopes, were laughing with practiced hilarity at
something an older man with spotted hands and a gut spilling out
over his elasticized waistband had managed to spit out.

Clarissa noticed that one of them had a rip in her nylons. She
noted the scuffed shoes.

Clarissa was all too aware of this tragedy; it was her own personal
Clarissa Regina Alpert nightmare. Los Angeles was known as the land
of broken dreams (blah, blah). Saunter on your Jimmy Choos into any
of the better restaurants -- the standards, Spago, Mr. Chow, Nobu,
Ivy, Chaya, Giorgio -- the tyros -- the House, Lucques, Chadwick --
and there was always the table Clarissa avoided like the plague (or
retail...or

J. C. Penney...or Estée Lauder foundation), the table that was
either closest to the bathroom or the kitchen, the one with the two
women, 90 percent of the time overblonde, with delicate, oval faces
that looked good when...

When.

They would eat their salad ("appetizer size, please") in
tidy forkfuls and engage in the appearance of conversation that
both were too tired for, and if you didn't watch closely (as
Clarissa did, for she couldn't help herself -- how many get to see
their future so clearly?) you wouldn't notice that they didn't
share eye contact, that they didn't laugh. That they got up to go
to the bathroom at least three times, and they walked slowly, heads
up, face set, knowing this, this, was no longer a dress
rehearsal; that they always ordered three glasses of house
chardonnay but never dessert.

That they were watching your table, watching you watching them.
Running their eyes over you like a truck.

And you didn't blame them.

Clarissa shivered. She had to get married before the end of the
year. Her timeline was clear: she would be twenty-nine (thirty-two)
in November; she and her lucky husband would have two children
within four years; she'd be divorced by forty and still hot (thanks
to Dr. Drew Franklin of the Beverly Hills Triangle) and living the
good life while the nannied, tutored, personal-trained kids
attended out-of-state boarding schools.

But if they fell in love, well...Clarissa wondered about the odds.
She'd been in love once. Had she already used up her
chits?

A plan. Clarissa always had a plan. (Important Subplot: Her father,
the Horrible Teddy Alpert, was threatening to stop paying her rent.
This meant two things: a. Clarissa would have to get a job.
Impossible, because, as she told her father, "I am my own full-time
job"; leaving: b. Clarissa would have to get a husband who had a
job.) Also, Clarissa felt she was, at her age, walking around with
an expiration date on her head.

The waiter took Clarissa's pen from her frozen hand and wrote these
words:

6-10: AARON MASON.

He wrote it in all caps, as though the name were bigger than the
sum of itself.

"Who?" Clarissa looked at him, hazel eyes widened with curiosity,
greed...and hope.

"Your last hurrah. Read your trades, Missy Miss."

Clarissa drove her convertible BMW (the preferred driving
instrument for young hot women with acquiring minds) to the
all-night newsstand at Fairfax and Third and bought copies of the
Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and a couple music trades,
though she loathed anything having to do with the music industry.
After she told the ancient cashier to keep her change in order not
to touch his hand, she didn't bother waiting to read the papers.
She sat in the open air of her driver's seat as homeless people
beckoned.

"Quarter for a song?" a black man with aging dreads asked.

"I'll need more than that," Clarissa said. Clarissa loathed reading
under the best of circumstances (in her defense, she did enjoy
Vogue and Cosmopolitan and sometimes Marie
Claire, when it didn't get all "intellectual"); she needed to
concentrate.

He was taken aback; he thought he'd heard wrong.

"You want me to pay you?"

"Look, Frank Sinatra, Jr., okay, I'll give you a dollar to walk
away from here without singing."

He took it.

And Clarissa found her man: Aaron Mason had bought something called
the "underlying rights" to something called The Gay
Divorcee, an old Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical (Ugh. I
hate old musicals, Clarissa thought) for $1.5 million, paid to
the inheritors of the original play --

"One-point-five mill -- !" Clarissa exclaimed. The number gratified
her, then made her angry that someone would spend so much money on
something that wasn't even in color.

Aaron explained, in the article, that among the things he loved
growing up, "the lonely scion of a Forbes 500 family" (the
reporter's words), was old musicals. And his very favorite was
The Gay Divorcee.

"I adore old musicals!" Clarissa said. And then proceeded to the
twenty-four-hour video rental store on the Strip, a place
frequented by blow hounds on a bender, garden-variety insomniacs,
and porn addicts. She instantly forgot about the Playboy Mansion
and its gaudy clarion song.

Clarissa Alpert had homework to do.

Clarissa's mom was taking a dump in Clarissa's own bathroom;
Clarissa hated this because waste moved through Clarissa's mother's
body and came out the other end with little molecular
restructuring: If she ate corn, out came a cob; if she ate carrots,
deli salad it would be; if she ate steak (she rarely ate steak, or
anything with more than 150 calories a serving, for that matter),
out came a Hereford.

"Mom!" Clarissa shouted. Her voice was naturally scratchy, like
Demi Moore after a week of screaming at assistants. Some found it
sexy, some merely annoying. Clarissa picked up the remote control
and rewound. She was on her seventh viewing of The Gay
Divorcee; as far as she could see, the movie was about how tap
dancing could lead to wedding bells.

"Wha'?"

Her mother always said "Wha'?" instead of "What?"

"You know what I told you about taking dumps in my fucking
bathroom?"

"You should wash out that mouth, that's wha'."

"T! T! T! T! What!"

"Pffft."

This meant "Shut your mouth, dear daughter, you mean little cunt,
or I'll cut you like a knife."

The problem was, her mother was hooked on a molten something called
"Dieter's Tea." It contained an enormous amount of "natural"
laxative, enough to clean out a 747 engine. Clarissa drank it once,
after a Thanksgiving dinner -- she was going to have sex that night
with an entertainment attorney with an enormous shlong and bigger
Mercedes, and though she loved a heavy meal, especially
Thanksgiving dinner, she also loved sex.

She drank it, and almost laid a brick right in the middle of
foreplay.

Oral foreplay.

The tea had made her sweat and cramp; she crawled to the bathroom,
bent over like a halter-topped Quasimodo. The attorney never called
again, except once that next morning, because someone had taken his
favorite meditation CD, the one with the stupid monks or something,
and he had to ask...

Well, of course Clarissa had taken it. She knew he wasn't going to
call again (there's always a first time!) and she wanted to
punish him.

Oh...what Clarissa learned from the entertainment attorney: Never
drink Dieter's Tea before sex. Never.

Also: Big Mercedes, like the 600 series, drive more smoothly than
the small, sporty models.

Her mother was addicted to the hideous brown, bark-tasting liquid;
she drank it three times a day. Once Clarissa had convinced her
mother to stop drinking the foul tea; her bowels got so badly
backed up, Clarissa had to rush her to the hospital so a dashing
Indian intern could stick a long, dark finger up her mother's tiny,
crepey butt.

Clarissa subverted her own rules (don't date anything that can't
get you into the VIP section of a premiere or table seven at Mr.
Chow) and had three dates with the intern until realizing, on the
traditional third-date screw, his dick had the circumference of a
number two pencil. She was hoping he'd be a "Grower, not a Shower,"
to no avail. The shock was so great that Clarissa retired, staying
home every night for a month, with only Oreos, Red Bull and vodka,
and her Bunny Ears vibrator to keep her company.

Finally, her mother came out of the bathroom to face Clarissa's
grimace, which wasn't what it used to be, because of the
botox.

"Wha'?"

"What?"

"Don't star -- "

Start! Clarissa screamed in her head. Her mother was Jewish
Bolivian, the granddaughter of a Bolivian general, once very
beautiful, still petite. Clarissa looked like a Chechen
weightlifter downing steroids for breakfast when she stood next to
her.

"Mommy, did you read the article?" Clarissa shifted gears
smoothly.

"Leave that boy alone." Not smooth enough.

"So Not Supportive," Clarissa tried to whine, but she was not a
natural; her whine came out more like a Volkswagen engine straining
over the Sepulveda Pass.

"He's not going to marry you."

"Want a bet?"

"Wha'?"

"Bet. Bet. You want to bet."

"No gambling."

"Mom, it's not gambling. Look, he's having lunch at the Ivy next
Tuesday." Clarissa knew this because, posing as a ditsy secretary
who didn't wish to incur her boss' wrath, she had called every
upscale restaurant on the west side to ask if they had a
reservation under "Aaron Mason."

"I'm not going with you."

"Yes, you are. I can't invite my friends. They're either too hot or
they're too evil -- there'd be nothing left of him. He'd be man
dust."

Her mother waved her hand, as she often did when she was
agitated.

"Don't say that, Mom."

Her mother waved her hand again.

"I'm not going to use him, or ruin him, or whatever it is you think
I do to men." Clarissa uncoiled herself from her red velvet couch,
purloined from an ex-boyfriend's defunct nightclub (from whom she'd
learned to always keep chilled vodka on hand). "I just want to meet
him."

Her mother narrowed her eyes and gestured once more.

"Great. I want you to wear the black Armani suit, the silk one with
the silver buttons."

Mom's hand fluttered up and down.

"It does not make you look fat. You couldn't look fat if you were
fat -- Jesus!"

Clarissa rose from the couch and strode to the bar (otherwise known
as "the mantel") in her rented off-Robertson duplex; her apartment
was a place where scores of girls like her settled until boys like
Aaron (only less rich) married them. Clarissa had stopped counting
the girls in her five-square-block neighborhood (Robertson to La
Cienega; Beverly to Third) who fit her description when she reached
into the thirties: 25-34 (same as the coveted, ideal 9:00 P.M. Fox
TV audience), straight blonde or brown hair (if not naturally
straight, blow-dried twice weekly), tallish, but not supermodel
tall, drinkers of cappuccino (morning) and vodka (evening), and
eaters of...not much. They lived off Daddy and Mommy, though their
stipends didn't cover designer shoes and rent and
subscriptions to forty-eight beauty magazines. And, lastly, they
were jobless, or, at the very least, on the verge of being
jobless.

And not at all worried about the prospect.

Their signature personality statement was that they never worried.
About anything: poverty, war, dinner, children, grandparents, the
melting of the polar ice cap.

Clarissa made two Belvedere vodka tonics (filling hers, first, with
maraschino cherries -- she liked only red drinks) and walked toward
her mother, putting her large gold head (a friend once remarked
that it belonged on the face of a coin) on her mother's tiny
shoulder.

"Please, Mama." The clincher.

Her mother patted her head; Clarissa knew she was home free -- her
mother would never let her down.

On the fateful day, the most important day of young(ish) Clarissa's
life, her short, skinny, black-lunged mother totally bagged out on
her. Clarissa told her mother to "screw herself sideways" and hung
up on her, but not before they made early dinner plans at Mr. Chow;
Clarissa was les screwed -- she couldn't have lunch at the Ivy
alone; nobody had lunch at the Ivy alone. The whole point was to go
with someone else, then pay no attention to them; she'd stand out
like a sore pseudo-AMW (actress/model/whatever). Clarissa careened
through her Palm Pilot like an Indy racer, determined to find the
one name who would combine three important qualities: 1. relative
attractiveness (i.e., a mousier, perhaps chubbier version of
herself); 2. relative popularity (i.e., well known, well respected,
not popular with men); and 3. relative desperation (i.e.,
someone who, on an hour's notice, could meet at the Ivy).

Well into the Rs, Clarissa struck lunch-companion gold.
Roberta Raskin, she of the shiny red locks, the doe-eyes, the
six-foot (but with extra poundage) frame -- she would do. Roberta
was a partner in a big P.R. firm, in her early thirties, desperate
for male companionship, but dull as an undernourished houseplant.
Normally, Clarissa couldn't stand Roberta -- all the girl talked
about was some half-brained, quarter-dicked, hair-plugged
television director who dumped her five years ago; the man
was married to an uglier version of Roberta with two equally
ugly kids, for God's sake. However, Roberta was always good for a
party invite; she represented young comic talent, and that talent
was becoming big and Roberta always remembered Clarissa whenever
there was a premiere, or a soiree, or a Vicodin-addicted
bachelor.

Inviting Beige Roberta turned out to be a stroke of genius. She was
there on time, securing the perfect table outside (next to a bevy
of older, anesthetized blondes with diamond watches as dazzling as
their husbands' bank accounts), where they could see and be seen,
and waited patiently for Clarissa, who showed up twenty-two minutes
late.

Roberta, in her brown Jil Sander uniform, looking very Third Reich-
chic, had eaten through the bread basket and sucked the lemon out
of her iced tea by the time Clarissa waltzed in, wearing tan
leather pants, a silk and cashmere Gucci sweater, and a bright pink
face from her acid peel.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry!" Clarissa squealed, simultaneously taking
note of the restaurant's seating arrangements and silently cursing
the dermatologist who told her her pigletlike complexion would be
perfectly normal in a half hour; she'd have canceled her check had
she ever bothered paying him -- she made a mental note to stop
blowing him on their twice-monthly dates.

"Not at all -- I'm putting out fires." Roberta set aside her silver
Nokia. "You look fabulous."

"You think?" Clarissa asked, her eyes widening. She wondered why
she didn't call Roberta more often.

And then, jogging Clarissa's memory, Roberta sang out a refrain
almost as familiar to Clarissa as Bing Crosby's "Christmas Song":
"He took out another restraining order."

Clarissa remembered why she didn't ring; she sank into her chair
and thirty minutes of Roberta's married-with-children director-ex
saga. She would have rather sat through the entire sixth season of
Murder, She Wrote.

Clarissa was on her third iced tea, trapped in the haze of
Roberta's nonexistent love life, when the midnight blue Bentley
drove up, forever dividing her (relatively short) life into
"Before" and "After."

In Clarissa's unpublished but popular underground "Rules of
Dating," there was a list of cars she preferred (to be seen in).
She did not know the difference between a Rolls-Royce and a Bentley
and did not care; both makes were at the top of her list, in a
three-way tie with the Mercedes V12, convertible or hard top.
Porsches, any insurance salesman with a bank loan could buy. BMW
screamed anal retentive, very possibly wife-beater. Range Rover
said the man was trying a wee bit too hard to appear sporty;
Clarissa loathed "sporty." However, the inevitable problem with the
Rolls or the Bentley is the person driving it would be: a. Old. Old
like Hefner old. Old like Fernando Lamas (if he's still alive) old;
or b. A Rap Star. Clarissa was not attracted to rap stars. To her,
rap and opera were in the same category: She could not understand a
word, and she didn't like the clothes. Also, as good as she was at
lying, especially about her background, she had difficulty
contending she was African American, though in college she once
told a USC football player/biochem major with irresistible, shiny
onyx skin that her grandmother (a smaller, meaner, Yiddish-speaking
version of her mother) was Creole.

Clarissa let out a gasp.

"You're right, I can't understand why he left me," Roberta snorted
wetly into her napkin; her chin quivered like a landed goldfish.
Clarissa would have slapped her under any other
circumstances.

"Aaron Mason."

"Who?" Roberta whined.

"Shoosh," Clarissa said, sounding just like her mother, God Rest
Her Soul. Not that she was dead. Yet.

Aaron Mason got out of his Bentley and walked up the stairs, and
every pair of eyes in the restaurant was locked and loaded. This
guy was the real deal -- tall, dark, handsome, yes -- but also,
rich.

He wouldn't last long in this town full of maneaters. Clarissa
would have to move fast.

Then she noticed the limp. Clarissa took one look at that limp and
knew beyond anything she had ever known before that Aaron was the
man for her. She mentally scratched every other power cock off her
list; trapping Aaron would require her full concentration. She'd
start popping vitamin C and echinacea. She'd get a B12 shot
tomorrow, and wondered about an early flu vaccine; she'd need all
of her physical strength and mental vitality.

"Peepers," Clarissa said. She shot up and walked off, one foot
directly in front of the other, heel-to-toe, giving her hips sway
and her plan momentum.

She cut a swath through the murmuring, heaving, ringing lunch crowd
and realized ("plus de luck!") she had screwed one of
Aaron's lunch mates outside her friend's Malibu Carbon beach house
two summers ago. He drove a Range Rover with a spacious backseat
and surprisingly supple leather interior; she'd escaped with nary a
rug burn. She had filed this particular tryst under BAF, for
"Backstage Access Fuck"; he had just signed a lead singer from a
forgotten band.

"It's so all about connections," Clarissa congratulated herself, as
she crossed in front of Aaron's table, Vera Wang wedding dresses
and ivory Manolos dancing through her uncrowded head.

Oops.

She stopped, midpounce.

"First rule, Princess," Clarissa admonished herself. "To get a
man's attention: Ignore him."

Clarissa scooted around Aaron's table, looking off in the distance
as though Prince William himself were flashing her from inside the
kitchen.

"Clarissa!" She made the fuzzy-looking man at Aaron's table wait as
she tried to remember his name. She remembered body parts so much
better than names.

"Clarissa!"

Cone-shaped penis, hairy shoulders -- hairy like Dan Haggerty,
Grizzly Adams hairy...Jamie, Joe, John, Ian, Kyle, her mind
scurried like a hamster through her mental Rolodex.

"Maxi!" She turned and greeted the man as though the last time they
had seen each other was on a train platform before the Great War.
Tooth enamel-peeling enthusiasm was the only acceptable greeting
mode in Hollywood, especially in the case of enemies. The more
hated the person, the more enthusiastic the greeting.

Clarissa traded a triple-cheek air kiss (new to California, but all
over the Paris scene, according to French Vogue) and
thousands of hellos with Maxi, her largish but well-shaped melon
ass hovering at eye-level with Aaron Mason ("Mrs. Aaron Mason, Ms.
Alpert-Mason, Mrs. Clarissa Antonia Alpert Mason, no hyphen...,"
the names danced circle jigs in her head); her butt swayed with her
every breath, as though carrying on its own conversation with the
chain-store heir. Clarissa, expert at the
ignore-him-until-he-throws-something-sharp technique, burned holes
into Maxi the Agent's brain with practiced interest, all

the while feeling every flicker of an eyelash off of Aaron, every
tap of a toe against his shoe. As Maxi rattled on about his
semifamous clients, his third-row-center Laker season tickets
(Clarissa to Clarissa: "Not impressed -- everyone knows the only
seats that count are on the floor, okay."), his St. Barts
boating scare, and his weekly basketball game with Clooney and
Damon, Clarissa weighed the pros and cons of ivory versus eggshell,
Queen Anne silk against four-ply satin, emerald cut versus
brilliant versus solitaire...

"Have you met Aaron?"

Finally, you hirsute fuckwad, Clarissa smiled to herself,
the words she had been waiting...

"Hello," Clarissa lowered her voice and raised her eyebrows, but
not so much as to wrinkle her forehead. She smiled, dazzling Aaron
with her...

"You have something in your teeth," Aaron's Georgian accent came
out as flat as her mother's breasts (before the lift).

Oh my God, Clarissa thought, smoothly running her tongue
over her not-yet-paid-off wonders of cosmetic dentistry, he's
rude! That's so me!

"Maybe I'm saving it for dessert," Clarissa said.

Aaron smiled.

He had dimples, one higher than the other. A slightly chipped front
tooth (childhood accident? college fisticuffs? beer bottle cap
mishap?). A crease between his dark, full eyebrows made him
seem deep in a world of shallow-end swimmers. His dress was prep
school gone wrong, and, Clarissa felt, irresponsible for a young
man of his means: He wore no-name sunglasses with a shirt that was
too big and a tie a pinch too small and a sportcoat that would have
been rumpled, given a nice ironing. He looked like a very bad
Catholic boy.

And then there were his shoes, which were not shoes at all, but
boots. COWBOY BOOTS!

Not only wrong -- borderline unforgivable.

Aaron Mason was a lump of clay (albeit a gorgeous lump of clay),
but in Clarissa's hands...Clarissa ran her eyes over Aaron with the
same speed and intensity she employed as a hardline shopper at the
Barneys Annual Warehouse Sale. And long before she had assembled
information on the label and material and point of origin of Aaron
Mason's slacks (and guessed about his underwear -- she'd bet her
fall wardrobe he was a boxer man), Clarissa blessed Larry the
Waiter. With a tweak here, a fresh coat of paint there, a good
tweezing (wax?), a haircut by Chris McMillan, here was the new "Mr.
Alpert."

Excerpted from MANEATER © Copyright 2003 by Last Punch
Productions, Inc. Reprinted with permission by Simon &
Schuster. All rights reserved.

 

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