“Are you kidding?” Lionel grinned boyishly. “I'm crazy about it. I can't wait to get it out tomorrow and really go for a spin.” He smiled at Greg's friend. John had been hanging around their house for years, and he had always liked him. He was more interesting than most of Greg's jock friends, although he had discovered that by accident one day when he'd talked to John when Greg was out. Most of the time, John pretended to be like the rest of them, but Lionel correctly guessed that it was camouflage he wore, and there was a lot more to him than just football and track and the rest of it, which had never interested Lionel very much. “I start work next week, and it's going to be great having my own car.”
“Where are you going to work?” John sounded interested, and Anne watched the exchange, saying nothing, as she always did. But listening to her brother, and watching John's face. She had always thought he had beautiful eyes.
“Van Cleef & Arpels. It's a jeweler in Beverly Hills.” He felt a need to explain it to him. None of Greg's friends would have had any idea what that was.
But John laughed, and watching him, Anne smiled. “I know that. My mother goes there all the time. They have pretty stuff.” Lionel looked both surprised and pleased. John hadn't gagged at the thought of Lionel's working there. “Sounds like a nice job.”
“It is. I'm looking forward to it.” He beamed, glancing in the direction of the car again. “Especially now.”
“And UCLA in the fall. You're lucky, Li. I'm sick to death of high school.”
“It won't be long now. You've only got a year to go.”
“It feels like an eternity.” John groaned and Lionel smiled.
“And then what?”
“I don't know yet.” That wasn't unusual. Most of his friends hadn't figured that out.
“I'm doing cinematography.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
Lionel shrugged modestly. He had won photography awards ever since he was fourteen, and he had started getting into film two years before. He was ready for everything UCLA could offer him, and excited about going there, in spite of what his father said. His father had wanted him to go to a gung-ho school in the East. And he had the grades. But it had absolutely no appeal to him. He could sell that line to Greg.
He looked at John with a friendly smile. “Come and see me at school sometime. You can have a look around while you're making your mind up about schools.”
“I'd like that a lot.” John looked at him intently, and for a moment, the boys' eyes met and held, and then quickly, John turned away, and a moment later he spotted Greg. He seemed anxious to leave them then, and Lionel invited Anne to dance. She blushed furiously at the thought and refused to dance with him, but after he had insisted for a while, she relented and followed him onto the floor.
“What's that?” The boy who had wandered into the house with Val had followed her into the den, and he was determined to get a hand up her skirt, which didn't look too hard. But a coveted object pushed onto a shelf in the bar had caught his eye. “Is that what I think it is?” He was impressed. This was the first house he'd been in that actually had one of those, even though you sure heard about them a lot in L.A.
“Yeah. So what? Big deal.”
“It sure is.” He stared at it in awe, and then reached a hand out to touch it so he could tell his Dad when he picked him up. “Whose is it? Your Mom's or your Dad's?”
It seemed to cost her something to admit it to him. “My Mom's. You want a beer, Joey?” And then he almost fainted. There was another one. They had two!
“My God! She's got two of them! What for?”
“Oh for chrissake. I don't remember. Now do you want a beer or not?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” But he was much more interested in hearing what her mother had won the Oscars for. His Dad would ask him later, and so would his Mom, but Val didn't seem to want to talk about them. “She used to be an actress, didn't she?” He knew she was a director now. Everyone knew that. And her Dad was a big producer at MGM. But Valerie sure didn't talk about it much. She was more interested in booze